By Sarah Hassaine-Nadoona Exercise Consultant

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know, what are you thinking?”

“We can grab dinner or dessert?”

“Yeah let’s do dinner and then grab coffee or something?”

“Ok, cool.”

And so it goes right?

I think we all have this conversation at least once a week while coordinating a social outing with a friend. It can be on the phone, via email, chat or text.  Doesn’t matter the medium – the end result tends to be the same.

My goal in the next few minutes as you read this article is to hopefully change the outcome of this conversation, at least occasionally.

Culturally, our social and family lives tend to revolve around food.  When we reunite with family and friends it’s always around a meal.  It’s what brings people together.  Globally this is the case, families and friends gather for dinner and sit for two to three hours just talking, sharing stories, and eating.  Our social lives are dictated around meal times. The Prophet peace be upon him taught us that there is blessing in eating together, but we’ve taken things to a whole new level!

Below are the most popular options that we consider when meeting up with a friend:

-          Dinner and a Movie

-          Dessert and a Movie

-          Dinner and Dessert

-          Dessert

-          Mall and Lunch and Coffee

-          Mall and Coffee

-          Mall and Dinner and Coffee

I think you see the trend!

Essentially my main concern here is that our friends and our choices can lead to weight gain because our choices tend to revolve around food.  Our families and friends can make us “fat”/”fatter.” And of course, eating out all the time is not the healthiest of options.  Food outside the home tends to be higher in calories, in sodium, and in fat, making a healthy life style more challenging to achieve.  It is essential to recognize that we are greatly affected by the people we surround ourselves with.

Picture this: You are an avid and dedicated smoker and all your friends smoke.  You want to quit. You decide to quit.  However you stick to it throughout the week but as soon as you get together with your friends and they all light up their cigarettes, you cave in.  It is hard to be the odd man out and the desire is just too strong.  One puff and you feel great again, and then the guilt of caving into a cigarette washes over you and you console yourself that you will “quit next week” and resume lighting up.

The exact same scenario can be applied to healthy eating and to maintaining a balanced lifestyle.

I have had many clients that have told me it’s hard to not eat in certain settings due to the comments people make.  One woman relayed that everyone at her office grabbed fast food every day for lunch together and so she would feel left out if she did not go with them.  When she started bringing her own lunch, they all attacked her for “trying to be healthy” and teased her food choices.  This was real distressing and she could not stick to her regimen for a long time.

This is often the case: donuts at work, candy jars in the reception area, company birthdays and lunches; and then with friends, an occasion to hang out and splurge – there is always a party or invite of some sort. It is said that people can gain up to 15 pounds a year due to food available at work.

We face a lot of temptation on a daily basis and the will that needs to be in place to withstand all the options has to be very defined and sure of its conviction.  It is never easy when you are a guest in someone’s home and they keep piling more food on your plate and you “have” to eat it because its rude not to.  Or when all your friends are grabbing dessert at the Cheesecake Factory and that White Chocolate Raspberry has your name on it too. Or when all your friends are ordering the Penne Bolognese and suddenly that Asian Chopped Salad no longer seems appetizing.

Psychologically, we push what we may want, or know we may need, out the window for another day.

But why?

There is no better time than the present to withstand the pressures. The temptations will always be there – the hope is that your inner strength will become laden with a set conviction of what you do need. Once you stand for it, you will feel stronger and better about yourself.

While being different amongst your family and friends is hard, the satisfaction you will feel for standing up for yourself and for your needs will outweigh the momentary bliss that sets in when you cave in for the food item you ordered/ate while with them.  In the end, you will be respected for standing up for yourself.  If people do make comments – it is often out of jealousy, admiration or their own insecurities.  At the end of the day, true friends and loved ones will support your choices no matter what.  You just need to respect yourself.

Here are some options to consider when planning to see a friend that span outside the options of just food:

-          Walk in a park

-          Walk in a museum

-          Walk on the beach/river/body of water

-          Do an exercise or yoga video together

-          Go take an exercise class together or go to the gym together

-          Take a dance class

-          Walk and shop (shopping burns calories! Yeah!)

-          Bake and cook together (a lean, healthy meal of course )

When ordering at a restaurant/café with friends, try to stay away from:

-          Anything creamy and cheesy

-          Thick dressings (stick to vinegars or just olive oil and vinegar)

-          Red meats

-          Fried foods

-          Free bread and chips that are endless and free at the beginning of your meal

-          Ordering an appetizer and a big meal

-          Finishing your plate if it is too much food  – get a to-go box (you can even ask the waiter to box half your meal and bring you the rest so you’re not tempted to eat the whole plate)

-          Butter sauces

-          Rich desserts (hey I am a girl – I love dessert, order something light and split with friends!)

Fun Nadoona Fact: The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “Food for one is enough for two and food for two is enough for three and food for three is enough for four.” [Ahmad, At-Tirmidhi, An-Nasaa'I, Ibn Majah – Hadith sahih]

-          Thick white processed breads (ask for whole wheat)

-          Creamy drinks (get tea and add milk)

-          Condensed or evaporated milk

-          Soda!

If you take away one thing from this article – it’s this: your friends and family can make you fat, but you are in charge of letting that happen.  Temptations will always be there but how you face them can be a determining factor on your health and active lifestyle.  Your challenge is how you answer this question the next time you are planning to meet up with a friend: “So what do you want to do?” You got this!

Lasagna appears to require a lot of time and hard work but in reality a lot of the components can be made ahead and it can easily be doubled to make an extra meal. One pan of lasagna usually serves us for 2 meals so what I like to do is double up on the ingredients and make a second pan at the same time. The second one gets popped into the freezer and is ready to pull out for a quick meal when you’re in a rush or are having one of those, “what in the world should I cook for dinner?!?!” days. So, that way 1 afternoon of work gives me 4 dinners!

The steps can be broken down into 3 categories: Sauce, ricotta filling, and layering. In total you’ll spend about 40 minutes in the kitchen; the rest of the day you’ll just spend drooling over the smell as the sauce bubbles away.

Place you’re noodles to boil while you prep the rest of your ingredients

You might need to put the spinach a little at a time so it can wilt down.

The spinach is done as soon as it’s wilted down to less than half it’s size.

While the spinach is cooking add the ricotta, egg, salt and pepper to a bowl. Add in a bit of Parmesan as well if you like.

Mmmmmm! This is definitely the yummiest layer.

I’m not a fan of using a lot of pots and pans so once the noodles are done and out of the pot I add in a bit of oil and the meat.

Mix the meat so it loosens up and releases it’s juices

Add in the chopped onions and mushrooms

After you add in the garlic, tomatoes, and seasonings the sauce will simmer on the stove for a few hours until it thickens up an the flavors develop.

You can chop, shred, or slice your cheese. The end result is all the same! Usually I go for shredded but thought I’d try a different approach this time.

The amount of ricotta filling is up to you but this is probably my favorite part of the whole dish

At this stage you can cover it and save it for later or bake it straight away

Nothing yummier than a fresh pan of lasagna with some garlic bread and salad!

————
Ingredients:

• 9 lasagna noodles
• 2 bags of pre-washed spinach (or 1 big bundle)
• 3 cloves of garlic chopped
• 1-2 containers of Ricotta
• 1 egg
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1-1.5 pounds of ground beef
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 cup chopped mushrooms (optional)
• 2 cans of tomato sauce OR 1 can of sauce + 1 can crushed or diced tomatoes (really any combination of fresh, canned, or sauced tomatoes works)
• 1 TBSP sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning
• 2 cups shredded, chopped, or sliced Mozzarella cheese
• Parmesan cheese

—-
Directions:

1. Cook the lasagna noodles according to package directions
2. In a skillet heat olive oil and add 3 cloves chopped garlic. As soon as they become fragrant add the chopped spinach and allow it to cook down. If the spinach is too much for the pan wait a moment till it cooks down and add more. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. While the spinach cooks down add the ricotta, egg, and salt and pepper to a bowl. Once spinach is cooked down let it cool then add to the ricotta mixture. Mix and put in fridge.
4. Once noodles are done remove from the pot and place it back on the stove.
5. Brown the ground beef.
6. Add the onions and mushrooms and saute for a few minutes more. Salt and pepper as needed.
7. Add the garlic and mix in till fragrant. Add the tomatoes/tomato sauces + the seasonings.
8. Let it simmer for a few minutes then taste and adjust flavoring as needed. Note that the flavor will develop as the sauce simmers for an hour or two.
9. Cover the sauce and allow it to simmer for a few hours. In the meantime shred/chop/slice your mozzarella.
10. When everything is ready pre-heat the oven to 375. In glass 9×13 in pan ladle a thin layer of sauce (so the noodles don’t stick) and then add 3 lasagna noodles. Add a layer of sauce + cheese. Follow this with a second layer of noodles. Spread the ricotta mixture on top then add the final layer of noodles. On the top add the final layer of sauce + cheese.
11. At this point you can cover it and freeze it or refridgerate it for later use. If you are baking it now lightly grease a sheet of foil paper, cover, and place in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes covered followed by 20 minutes uncovered.

Servings 8-12.

Something I have recently noticed in the Muslim Community is Mothers are finding the need to defend their Birth stories, as though it needs explanation. It often seems like the friends and family of the birth mother are more interested in the “big question” rather than Mom’s emotional health. What? you don’t know what “big question” I am referring to? Let me paint a picture of what this looks like, for about 90% of new mothers…

Mom gets a few visitors at the hospital. She quickly pulls herself together hoping to look somewhat attractive. She finds the energy to put on a smile and greet her guests. Hoping the guests will do nothing but admire her baby, but after some initial meet and greet… the question eventually surfaces. “So I am guessing now that you know what labor is really like, your plan for a natural birth went out the window. Did you take the epidural when it was offered to you?” Mom hesitates, gulps and tries to avoid the question. She starts to tell the whole story, and ends up justifying and defending why her birth plan changed. She is Defending her Birth Story. However, at this point the visitors are not listening anymore. They heard what they wanted and that’s the answer to their burning question.

So, what exactly is wrong with this picture?  The thing is, Mom herself, has not had the time to process her own birth experience. She is burnt out from her adrenaline rush, eager to nurse her adorable baby and trying to remember where she put the extra baby blankets at home. At this point, Mom may not even remember all the details of her birth story.  The last thing she needs in an interview every time she meets an “experienced” mother.

People need to be more sensitive when it comes to how others have birthed. Just because you have experience does not mean you are necessarily qualified to truly educate someone on what birth could or should look like. Some will tell you that to aim for a natural birth is “unrealistic.”  Others may say things like “birth is too painful.”  That may have been true for them… but not for everyone.

I always heard while growing up that experience is the best teacher. Experience is a great teacher. However, there are two types of experiences: your own experiences and the experiences of others. We have all been to our own births. This means we are very qualified to talk about our own experiences, whether it is 2, 3, 4 or 5 births. But how many of us can say that we have been present for the entire time in the delivery room during someone else’s birth? What about 2, 3, 4 or 5 other women’s births?

The thought I want to leave you with is this: does the answer to the burning question really matter? Our community has become obsessed with the curiosity of birth. Sometimes even the Fathers will discuss births and ask the same questions as us women. When we wrap ourselves up in what doesn’t matter, we detract from what really does. A beautiful baby!

Whatever route he/she came by, it is always a blessing from Allah to hold a new life in your hands.

Birth is intimate, it is private and it is memorable- so long as we let it be.

By: Hira Khan
Doula, Mommy blogger
blog: alif2yaa.blogspot.com

It talks about the all too common faux paus of wearing hijab we see everywhere. Bangs coming out, the slippery hijab, the arm sausages (body suits)…we’ve either seen someone doing it, or we’ve become a victim to this ourselves. SO once we’ve realized our mistakes, tuck our big dangly earrings back into our hijab, draw it around our chests and wear something looser fitting, are we missing out on all the “fun”?

Firstly, we should remember that these changes are seeking the pleasure of Allah and fulfilling His commandments. There is more fun and beauty than we can imagine in store for those who please Him. Secondly, there ARE ways to dress up nicely without crossing the boundaries and even staying a safe distance away from them.

Let’s also take a step back to realize that our self-esteem and confidence about ourselves and our bodies should not come from over the top or out-of-bounds fashion. Beauty can be simple, natural and elegant. This is the type of beauty that lasts changes in styles, age and stays within the bounds of modesty. In fact, modesty is beautiful and immodesty can be crude and vulgar.

So, although I’m not the most fashionable hijabi out there, here is a list of simple and subtle stylish ways to be a hijabi.

1. Make sure it is clean, ironed and fits appropriately. Something as simple as being freshly washed, pressed and fitting correctly (ie not too long in the arms, length, shoulders etc.) can make an outfit look wonderfully put together. If someone asks, “Do you sleep in that (hijab)?”, it may not be out of ignorance! Take the extra time to iron it out. If you wear mostly long, flowy dresses or abayas, invest in a standing steam iron, like this. Sloppy is never in style.

Here are three signs to look for when trying to figure out if an abaya is just the right size:

a. Check the seams: even when you’re going for a loose-fitting look, the seams of your shoulder should sit right on your shoulder, the arm seams should begin right at your arm and when you lift your arms, there should not be any tugging. Any of these not lining up means this is not the right size.

b. Arm length: getting just the right length of sleeve is crucial to a put together look. Look for sleeves to hit either right at your wrist or a 1/2 inch longer depending on your preference. Any longer and it’ll easily get dirty and look like you’re a teenager from the 90’s. This is also a simple alteration that can be made to the sleeves for a custom fit.

c. Length of the garment: a long flowy abaya which trails to the ground might be beautiful in theory, but with stairs, escalators, strollers, shopping carts and driving, you’ll want to save the train for the wedding day. Measuring so that the abaya/skirt hits the top of your shoe is generally a comfortable length to walk in unobstructed and it falls beautifully. It also provides the right length for sitting down and crossing legs without revealing your calves.

2. Blazers/sweaters/cardigans. I got this idea from my friend who is a professional and ALWAYS looks the part. Whether you are on dinner date out or headed to a convention, a simple structured blazer, cardigan or sweater can provide the extra coverage, fit, and contrast of color needed to pull your whole outfit together. The best place to stock up on quantity and quality? Check out clearance racks in the beginning of the winter season and the very end. In the beginning, stores want to move out last year’s merchandise to make room for a new line. But as all hijabi’s know, a nice neutral cardigan never goes out of style or season.

3. Accessorize: So you tucked away all your earrings. You’re hiding your neck and don’t want to draw attention there. What kind of accessorizing can a hijabi do??

Sunglasses: B-)

Bracelets and rings: think one chunky piece or a matching delicate one; not armfuls of glass or worse, gold bangles.

Since completing Hajj – packing a few bags, a couple of days, and one more trip to Bin Dawood later – we were boarding a nice big air conditioned bus to take us to Madinah – the second part of our Hajj package. We had spent two weeks in Makkah and now we were going to spend about two and a half days in Madinah.

Surprisingly, the bus came pretty much on time to pick us up. But then we sat there and sat there and sat there in front of our apartment building. Then finally we moved. “Yeahhh!!! We’re on our way to Madinah!!!”

And then we stopped. In front of another apartment/hotel building to pick up some more people from our Hajj group who were a part of different packages than us. (There were other members of our Hajj group who stayed in Madinah first and then only proceeded to Makkah when it was Hajj time. After seeing Madinah, I sort of wished that’s what we had done too because I turned out to like Madinah a lot more than Makkah but it’s all good.)

We now had two buses just sitting there in front of the hotel building and we didn’t budge for at least half an hour or so after everyone was boarded and suitcases were loaded. What on earth was the problem?

One by one different volunteer brothers kept coming into our bus and asking us if we wanted to go sit in the other bus since it was near empty. Three single guys volunteered but the buses still didn’t move. They kept asking us if we wanted to go sit in the other buses. Everyone on this bus knew one another and were friends so if they really had to be on a road trip with anyone, it would be with their friends, not alone with no one to talk to.

A little bit of anger and frustration later, the buses finally started moving after the volunteers realized no one wanted to switch buses. Let’s just MOVE. My Hajj patience was really wearing out by now. I knew the trip would be long so I just wanted to get it started. Instead we had been sitting in a bus not moving for about an hour now. Goodness.

As we began going, people started breaking out the few snacks they had left and passing them around to share. Then most of us fell asleep.

When I woke up, we were clearly no longer in the city of Makkah. All I could see was desert around us. The bus was barely moving as well. We were stuck in a long line with several other buses going through a checkpoint. Great.

I tried falling back asleep after that but it never happened.

So with half of my voice gone (reminder: I was losing my voice since the third day of Hajj and coughing pretty bad – I hear it’s called the Hajj Cough, good to know) I resorted to staring out the window. Nothing was very interesting though.

Because you see, we were in the middle of a desert.

Desert scenery doesn’t change. It remains as follows: sun, dirt, rocks, sun, a lone bare tree, hills and mountains, and sun. And more sun.

From Google but this is really what it looked like. Sometimes there wasn't even a tree like that. It was all just sand and sun.

Driving past all of this I was so grateful to be in an air conditioned vehicle. I tried to imagine walking out there – no way. I also tried to imagine riding on a camel – nope. I would definitely die.

So this was the environment of Prophet Muhammed (sal Allahu ‘alayhi wasallam)? These are the lands he traveled when he fled for his life from Makkah to go to a city called Madinah? These are the lands in which they used to fight in battles to determine the fate of an entire religion?

I wrote in my journal when we had about four hours left to get to Madinah: “There’s nothing to see except sand, rocks, and mountains. There are occasional trees or shrubs and clay building structures. The route to Lubbock [I was talking about driving to Lubbock from Houston across all of Texas] is more entertaining than this. What’s best is that every few miles there are these brown signs that have dhikr [remembrances of Allah] on them like SubhanAllah, Alhamdullilah, Allahu Akbar, La ilaha il Allah, and Astaghfirrulah. It feels good to see these words.” It really did. It reminded me to remember Allah just a tad bit more during this ridiculously endless trip and how Allah is with you everywhere, even in the lonesome desert.

I later wrote in my journal: “We’re stopped at a bus station right now. I’ve realized that I’m dumbfounded as to how Allah placed His last and most beloved Rasul [Messenger] (sal Allahu ‘alayhi wasallam) in this barren land. Everything about the massive mountains and miles upon miles of nothing but dust and rocks just screams death.”

Halfway through our trip we stopped at a restaurant. I think just about every bus traveling to and from Madinah and Makkah stops there because there were so many buses parked out in front of it. There was a small musallah for everyone to pray in. I was hearing horror stories about the bathroom so I just got my water bottle and stood outside doing wudu with a Hajj mate. After praying we went inside the restaurant and my husband and I got plates of food and I got a mango juice (I was having constant cravings for mango juice while I was there) and sat outside in the wind eating. The food was Arab, obviously. It was some lightly seasoned chicken on top of rice with some diced, cooked vegetables like carrots and peas on the side. To us, this was lavish. We hadn’t eaten food like this in a while what with all of our money saving strategies and cheap Hajj package.

We couldn’t quite figure it out but we think this wasn’t even a part of our Hajj package so one of the volunteer brothers paid for everyone’s meals. May Allah bless him and his family, ameen.

From Google. This is generally what all the buses looked like.

Then we were back on the bus. Someone told us we had about three more hours to go until Madinah but it ended up being more like six or so. We later got to another checkpoint where they gave us a box of snacks as usual and I didn’t want to eat it. I wanted to save it for later in case we didn’t get to eat for a long time again. I started doing weird things like that with food ever since Makkah. Trying to hoard it in my bag but never eating it because I was afraid of some dire emergency where I would be almost completely dried out of energy and I would need to eat. I was being unreasonable.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Take books with you to Hajj. You just need one. Maybe two or three. You’ll have ample amounts of time on the bus rides and during rest stops to do nothing but read. Another option would be writing. Just don’t waste your time with idle talk. Remember it can lead to backbiting and that would just mess up your whole Hajj experience. Stay busy and productive.

I’ve always been very grateful to Allah that I very rarely had food issues in my life, even when I watched friends go on the most ridiculous diets, talk about being fat, become exercise-o-holics, nearly stop eating, and even begin purging. There was nothing wrong with any of their bodies. The illness was in the mind.

I never had to deal with that. I didn’t think I ever would. But I guess it’s the things we least expect to happen to us that ends up testing us after all.

After Hajj, I began binge eating. I’ve always been the type to stuff my face on occasion, but now I wanted to eat as much as I could every time I saw food. I couldn’t forget the feelings I had at Arafat, Muzdalifah, and during the long walks to and from the Jamaraat, Mina, and the Haram. True, a big part of the problem was also that my muscles were untrained for such strenuous activities, but the fact that we rarely got anything to eat was ridiculous.

Most people complained about the Hajj group we went with. Abdullah and I were of the opinion that, “Eh, it could’ve been a lot better but hey, at least we got to do Hajj and we did it properly. That’s all that matters. May Allah accept.” But we privately decided that whichever Hajj group we go with in the future, we’re going to make sure they do a better job of supplying us with meals. We don’t want to pay for the packages where they set up all-you-can-eat buffets in your tent, but just give us something that is decent for the needs of the human body.

Alhamdullilah, since returning to Houston I’ve vastly improved in normalizing my eating habits. In that amount of time I worked on getting back into my routine, accept that insha’Allah I won’t go hungry one day, and learn to be physically stronger. I lost eight pounds at Hajj and now I’ve gained back about half and am working on the rest as well.

Anyway, back to our Madinah bus ride…

We stopped at one more checkpoint upon getting to Madinah. We were stuck here for a while so I did what any girl bored out of her mind would do… I called my Bhabi, my older brother’s wife, back in Texas. I talked to her for a total of sixteen minutes, half of the time I was hacking and coughing because my throat didn’t like me trying to talk, and then the line got cut. I asked Abdullah what happened and he checked it and told me I used up all the remaining Riyaals we had put on our Saudi-bought cell phone. Oh, the Riyaals. Forgot about that. I was too used to my unlimited text and talk plan from Sprint, heh.

Finally everyone got back on the bus and we started moving out of this checkpoint. As we pulled out of the parking lot someone asked one of the volunteers how much further it was going to be now. They told us our hotel wouldn’t be very far from here. Lies, I thought to myself. I never trusted the time anyone gave out.

Surprisingly enough, the hotel ended up being pretty close by. The checkpoint was actually inside of Madinah so it wouldn’t be too far from there. As we approached the hotel some people were saying that Masjid an-Nabawi must be close to here.

Even though my voice was practically gone, I perked up and it was as if I was walking into Masjid al-Haram for the first time. I began pestering Abdullah, “Where is it?! Is it that one? Those look like minarets, no?!” He craned his neck to follow my line of sight and began telling me things like, “No, that’s just another building,” or “That might be just another masjid.” Then I started asking if we could go to the Masjid as soon as we drop our bags off to our hotel room and he said maybe. (I had no energy to go exploring at that point but I guess being around these two Masjids can give a person an adrenaline rush.)

After the bus driver circled around one block for five minutes, he finally stopped at a hotel. Everyone got off, claimed their bags, and began going inside the hotel. But then they began announcing a few people who were supposed to be in a different hotel. I could’ve sworn I heard mine and Abdullah’s names so I quickly told him and we followed those people to the other hotel. We got there and we went up to our rooms. I was in a room with a couple of elder women and Abdullah was in a room with a few guys. It was the most crowded hotel room I had ever been in. There was barely any place to move around. The sisters and I spent fifteen minutes arranging and rearranging our suitcases. It was truly ridiculous to be so crowded together like this. Don’t even get me started on how the bathroom was so small you could barely sit on the toilet.

But not too long afterward one of the volunteer brothers came knocking on our door to tell me that I’m in the wrong room. I’m supposed to be in the other hotel with Abdullah. We had clearly misheard the names they had announced.

So I struggled with all my suitcases to try to get them out of the room and take all four suitcases, two duffels, and two backpacks that my husband and I had all the way back by foot to the other hotel. (I cursed my luggage the whole way there.) When we got there they didn’t have any keys for us yet or weren’t sure which room we were supposed to be in – something like that – so we sat in the lobby. And sat. And sat some more.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: When you go for Hajj, travel light. You don’t have the time and energy to deal with too much luggage. (I had tons of bags because we were supposed to go to Pakistan afterward and I knew I’d have to bring back a fifteen-year supply of clothes for my whole family.) Otherwise don’t even think about it.

One of Abdullah’s friends came back from a store he had just gone out to with a bag of a few shawarmas. He gave one to Abdullah and we split it, inhaling it in less than a minute probably. (Anyone that ever gave us food or water I always made loads of side du’aa for. That guy probably didn’t know how badly we needed some food at that time and one small shawarma made all the difference.)

Finally the volunteer brothers came into the hotel with everything we needed to go up to our rooms and helped us with our bags. They apologized for the delay. They told us one of the sisters in the hotel we had just come from had suddenly fallen ill and they had to call an ambulance. While he told us this I was sitting there completely drained, my eyes were red, my voice was completely gone, I couldn’t stop coughing. I was cold, tired, hungry, and just wanted to curl up under some covers and sleep my life away. Upon hearing about that sister, I realized I needed to thank Allah. I was sick but insha’Allah I would recover from it. Thank God it was nothing that required me to become hospitalized for.

We went upstairs and Abdullah and I got separated once again into separate hotel rooms. I walked into mine and to my pleasure I would be bunking with two of my old roommates from Makkah, the Heena and Alaa, and also a new elder woman. I went inside, placed my suitcases as neatly as I could, prayed my maghrib and isha prayers combined due to the traveling we had done, stripped my hijaab and abaya and slipped inside the covers of the first empty bed I saw. I was freezing, my chest was aching, but all I cared about was that I had just eaten a bit of food and I would get to sleep in this comfortable bed. What more could I want?

Disclaimer: Details accounted in this Hajj series are mostly by memory. If a mistake has been made, especially in explaining something incorrectly about Islam, please contact us so we may correct it. If you have any questions, please post or email them. We will do our best to answer them here or in future chapters. Also, all names used in this series are aliases and not the real names of the actual people.

The Unforseen parallels between staying fit year round and staying devoted during Ramadan

Sarah Hassaine, NASM Certified Trainer, Nadoona Exercise Consultant

I think we all experience that moment of hesitation the day after Eid.  Your eyes are still shut as you stir in bed and suddenly you remember that Ramadan is indeed over.

“I am not fasting today!” Your mind excitedly communicates.

“Wait really? Am I really not fasting?” You question.

“Yes I am not fasting!”

Your eyes fly open and your mouth forms an excited smile. “Back to normal,” you think, breakfast time!

This fuels you to kick off the covers and run to the bathroom and freshen up before you decide what to eat for breakfast.  You may not even be hungry, and you may not even have a craving, but hey, you have been fasting for a month – you deserve it, right?  Just like you deserved all that honey baklava last night at the festive Eid party you went to.

But do you?

The truth of the matter is that we make excuses, and working out and eating right seem to fall off the radar, most likely because it takes diligence, time and commitment to see results.  We live in a society where we undoubtedly like immediate reactions; making a gradual transition to a healthy you, will take a while, thus we all tend to swerve, fall off the wagon, or just never get on.

Fasting, is of course, a spiritual experience.  While your body does use the “quiet time” of not processing food to repair your cells and detox your organs, the reality is that spirituality can be used in other aspects of your life, like taking care of your body.   You have just gone through 30 days of an amazing journey, but now that life is “back to normal” – the idea is to translate some of that same willpower and spirituality you exhibited this past month. Focus on the physical changes you want to make in your life to accompany the spiritual ones that carry on post Ramadan, such as prayer.

So as you descend the steps for breakfast the days after Eid, take some deep breaths to think about how you will get your body on the “right” physical path of exercise and on a healthy regime starting today. For starters, our body should eat 4-5 times a day so that we keep our metabolism working.  Ironically, this is similar to how many times we should engage in prayer.  Just as it is prescribed in the dogma to space out your prayers throughout the day, think about how you can space out your meals more frequently.  This keeps your body in a constant state of burning calories.  Unlike during Ramadan, where you would eat two meals a day (you all woke up for suhoor right? ) – this is unhealthy because whatever we do eat at iftar or suhoor is stored away given the day-long starvation mode.

In light of the fact that Ramadan marks the beginning of a New Year and your success in fasting, I want to share tips on how to turn the page and focus on a new rejuvenated you.

For starters: What is your goal? For a lot of women, it is just weight loss, and that is okay if you understand that is a very broad wish.  Weight loss is like falling in love and being in a relationship: it requires responsibility, ownership, compromise and commitment.  For this New Year, your first goal should be to believe in yourself enough to want to lose weight and engage in all aspects of weight loss, albeit eating healthy, exercising, reducing intake of sugars/starch, etc.

First step: Find and organize your motivation! Share your goal with friends, family, or look for support from groups like nadoona.com who challenge Muslim women to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle. Decide if you need a food journal or a workout journal and set it up conveniently for your access (Phone App/Google Doc/Written journal).  Food for thought: over 50% of women who had a journal saw results sooner than those who did not.

Second step: Write out a grocery list with healthy food options and stick to it. Set the incentive to try to cook more and have healthy snacks at home (no more Starbucks cookies mid-day!).  Invite friends over instead of going out. Treat yourself to healthy cook books (Do I hear Eid gift to yourself?).

Third step: Plan out all 4-5 meals every morning or the night before. For example, I pack my lunch and all snacks the night before. Occasionally I even prepare my breakfast.  You will feel so in charge of your body and empowered by your control.  In Ramadan, you most likely planned all your meals and you made it a point to be on time every day for dinner.  Be good to your body like this year round and eat frequently and not too late– skipping meals just results in weight gain.

Photo: (C) Dasha Wright

Fourth step: Most importantly – Exercise! It is true ladies, if you don’t burn it, you sit on it.  Start with three days a week of cardio for at least 30-45 minutes and then move up to four days within a few weeks and start interval training.  Once you start working out, your energy will increase and you will slowly feel more addicted to the process.  It’s like fasting, once you started, it got easier. Diversify your workouts so that muscles are always challenged and stimulated.  Remember to integrate core balance training and weights two to three times a week as well.  Make sure it’s fun! The idea is to get your heart rate up and sweat so that you are burning calories, so if you prefer to take dance classes, kick boxing, or anything of the sort, sign up!

Post Ramadan, we are all kind of weak and tired from a month of late nights, heavy meals and socializing.  After you read this article, do me a favor and go to the mirror and look at yourself in the eyes and think about these four steps.  Set the intention to start afresh.  Reflect upon your routine and see where you can make changes.  You just made changes for 30 days, now the idea is to make small changes in your daily life that will result in a healthier, lighter and happier you.  Ask yourself “When is the best time to work out? In the morning or evening?” Answer your question and find a schedule that works, do not shrug it off and say neither!  Ask yourself, “What shall I pack for lunch in the morning?” Answer your question with viable options, not, “I don’t have time I will just go to the deli.” You need to exercise control and demand the change from yourself.

I encourage you to check out nadoona.com. Nadoona is a movement for Muslim women to become aware of their bodies – essentially how they treat it and what they put into it.  On the site, you can sign up to take part in their weight loss challenge program, get fitness tips, partake in a health forum and get inspired by many success stories told personally by other mulimahs nationwide.  Nadoona will work with women to make sure that their workout program and nutrition matches their lifestyle and culture.

Ladies – there are so many resources and opportunities out there, so seize this New Year and unearth your motivation to take care of you. You have just proven to yourself throughout Ramadan how much discipline and self-control you do indeed have. Now, this needs to be translated and extended to healthy living year round. After all, if you don’t take care of your body – who will?  So now that you are in the kitchen and its breakfast time, what will you have?

Hajj Day 1 – Completed
Purpose: Enter into the state of ihram, make your intention for Hajj, and spend the day in preparation for the journey of Hajj.
Location: Mina camps

Hajj Day 2 – Completed
Purpose: To spend the afternoon from dhuhr to maghrib prayer times making du’aa and repenting to leave Arafat with all of our sins forgiven. Then to spend the night in Muzdalifah.
Location: The area of Arafat all day until sunset, then the area of Muzdalifah.

Hajj Day 3 – Completed
Purpose: To get out of the state of ihram stone the largest Jamaraat and perhaps also perform Tawaaf al-Ifaadah and Sa’ee.
Location: Begins in Muzdalifah, continue to Mina, then to the Jamaraat. Possibly to Makkah as well.

Hajj Day 4 – Completed
Purpose: To stone all 3 of the Jamaraat structures, perhaps also perform Tawaaf al-Ifaadah and Sa’ee if it was not done on day 3.
Location: Begins in Mina, then to the Jamaraat, then possibly to Makkah as well.

Hajj Day 5 – Now
Purpose: To stone all 3 of the Jamaraat structures and then return to Mina to sleep over for the night or leave by maghrib time to spend the night elsewhere.
Location: Begins in Mina, then to the Jamaraat, then either back to Mina or probably Makkah.

Have you ever waded through muddy water filled with floating trash while rain continues pattering on your head? That’s how I spent the remainder of my last day of Hajj.

I followed Abdullah cautiously, both of us making sure we got our we inched our way carefully on the slippery roads. In the beginning we tried bypassing as much trash as possible. Now we were just trying to make sure we didn’t lose our footing and fall into the sea of garbage trying to climb its way up our legs.

Remind me again, I thought to myself, why exactly I’m doing this? My other self replied, For the sake of food, you malnourished whiner! Oh yeah. Calories.

I tried to stay focused on all the nice food we were going to get once we make it to Bin Dawood, the super grocery store in Saudi Arabia. They had a wide variety of deli meats and cheeses which you can get a couple of kilos of. Then grab some loaves of fresh bread. Or you could get a custom made pizza baked nice and hot right in front of you. Otherwise you could go stroll down the aisles and pick up candies (Ferrero Rocher!) and chips and drinks from all over the world. There’s nothing that store lacked, masha’Allah.

Finally we crossed the median of a busy road, went in between honking cars that weren’t going to get anywhere in traffic and flooding like this, and entered the big Bin Dawood. As soon as I went in I knew it had all been worth it. People were bustling around, cash registers were chiming, shopping carts were squeaking their way through crowds. A small part of my nostalgia was dulled in this store. It was just like the supermarkets back home, alhamdullilah.

Just like the way Abdullah had led me to the Kabah the first time we went to the Haram, he grabbed me saying, “Come on!” with a grin of excitement and helped me snake through the crowd until we got to the pizza area. To our disappointment the ovens were off and the guy working there notified us that the smoke from the ovens goes up and out of a chimney, so due to the rain they had to shut the chimney and therefore can’t bake any pizzas. Aw, darn.

The Bin Dawood logo.

“It’s okay,” we said to one another, turning around to eye the wide selection of foods we had yet to explore. I came into the store with the intention of buying some wheat bread the way I do at home but we didn’t have that luxury. We scuttled over to the bakery and saw they barely had any breads left so we quickly grabbed a lone white loaf and went over to the deli meats and cheeses. We made a full circle around the display case of all the meats and cheeses. We each had a list of five different meats and five different cheeses we wanted. We finally narrowed it down though to some sort of smoked chicken and some spicy Mexican cheese and ordered two kilos of each. It took a long time to put in our order though. As soon as you leave America there’s very little sense of customer service. Everyone looks tired, ticked off, annoyed, wanting to not deal with you, especially since you’re some dorky foreigner who can barely speak two words of Arabic. Oh well. We were two very happy campers as we cradled our bread, meats, and cheeses in our arms and went skipping down the aisles to look at and buy more food.

I had told my husband beforehand I seriously needed some calcium so we headed over to the dairy section. I stood there eyeing all the different milks looking for one that had something like “2% reduced fat” written on it but the only thing I could find was “low fat” so I almost picked that one up when that little voice chimed in again informing me of how malnourished these past couple of weeks have made me look so my hand changed course and grabbed the whole milk. Yeah, white bread and whole milk, I was a dare devil now.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Take hundreds of dollars with you just for food. At Hajj time, all food prices are jacked up and your Hajj package may or may not include meals for all the other days besides Hajj time. Take a lot of money with you and spend wisely. Share your food with others, I think that always adds barakah (blessings) to the amount of food you have. Buy food for others. Take care of everyone as if they are your own family and Allah will take care of you.

We took all of our groceries and made our way to the payment line, paid a lot of money for the meats and cheeses but we didn’t care at all, and headed back out into the rain. It took another twenty minutes walking down all those filthy alleyways to our apartment building but we finally made it. Everyone in there was so lively and excited. I felt like we were in a (Muslim) dormitory and everyone was (Islamically) partying. It didn’t register in me then but I later figured everyone was just celebrating having completed their Hajj. Whoo hoo! I mean, subhanAllah.

Travel size detergent packets.

But I was too busy feeling like the most disgusting person on earth because my chapals, socks, shalwaar, and abaya were soaked in garbage water. I went into the bathroom, borrowing a friend’s detergent, and washed my clothes, took a shower, and changed into something else nice and warm. When I got done, I found Abdullah out in the upstairs lobby area handing out awesome sandwiches to everyone. Everyone was ecstatic. Done with Hajj AND food?! This must be Heaven.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Take less clothes and more laundry detergent with you to Hajj. Wash and reuse clothes rather than taking a bunch and changing every day. Cleaning products such as soaps, hand wipes, etc. are a good investment during Hajj time and helps you cut down on the bulky luggage.

We quickly realized it was a mistake having gotten the spicy Mexican cheese. We handed the sandwiches out to a bunch of Arabs and later when they walked by us they’d be sniffling or tearing. Some would be running towards the water cooler (just kidding). Anyway, it tasted awesome even though I had no mustard, mayonnaise, lettuce, and all. It didn’t matter – food was food.

We sat there in the upstairs lobby on a couple of prayer mats eating our chicken and cheese sandwiches next to our good friends, the youngest Egyptian Canadian couple, Alaa and her husband, while they ate their own type of sub sandwich with creamy cheese and cucumbers and talked about our Hajj experiences. And how people in the most beautiful masjid, Masjid al-Haram, walk around blowing snot and spitting phlegm into trash cans all day long – during Tawaaf, during Sa’ee, anytime, anywhere. We talked about how we don’t think we’ll ever forget the sound of those folks spitting their guts out. Alaa and her husband also told us what happened after they had to go back downstairs and redo their Jamaraat. My friend looked relieved that at least they made it out of Mina by maghrib prayer time (or else they would have had to spend the night in Mina instead of being able to return to Makkah as is the Hajj rule) but she was scarred by the experience. Why?

Any one of those people may lean over a trash can and begin a spit fest.

Alaa’s husband told us, “We had to do the stoning of the Jamaraat on the first floor as opposed to the third one. That place got completely flooded with water and filled with trash by the time we got down there so we did our Jamaraat wading through the trash. While we did that my wife was upset and said, ‘We’re good people. I come from a good family… Why is this happening to me?!’”

Upon hearing that we all burst out laughing and for months after that my husband and I would recall that story and laugh again. That’s the truth of Hajj. Everyone struggles in their own way. For some of us the struggle was cleanliness. Hajj is to purify your soul but you’ll get pretty nasty doing it.

Sitting there, nicely showered, eating a sandwich on a prayer mat, I was officially done with Hajj. So why didn’t it feel like it?

I figured it was a matter of it just sinking in and in a few days it would hit me. But it never did.

”Did We not expand for you, [O Muhammad], your breast? And removed from you your burden which had weighed upon your back and raised high for you your repute. For indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. Indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. So when you have finished [your duties], then stand up [for worship]. And to your Lord direct [your] longing.” – Qur’an, Surah ash-Sharh, Chapter 94

Because you see, Hajj never ended. Even today, as I write this months later, I still don’t feel fully out of the Hajj mode. Ever since Abdullah and I got back from Hajj our lives have not been easier. It has been one struggle on top of the next. I got frustrated at some point and said to myself, “Back in Houston, in my own home, I thought I would get to relax now!” The truth is that we will never get to rest. We will always have to work hard. Rest will come with the final breath. Until then, don’t expect complete and final relief from the trials you face. Yes, God knows there’s only so much we can handle so He gives us breaks here and there. God gives us ample amounts of happiness in our lives because He knows that’s our juice so we keep going to get to the Eternal Bliss.

Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? I believe in taking it one step at a time. Think about the next fifty years and you’ll be cowering under your bed not wanting to come out and face the world again. Think about the next week and it’s much more bearable. You know when people say, “Life happens” – I hear it as “Destiny happens.”Every moment, God is shaping our destinies. Hajj is like a wake up call. It’s something falling out of the sky, hitting you on the head and saying, “Hey, focus!”

”… Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves…” – Qur’an, Surah ar-Ra’d, Chapter 13, Verse 11

As I said before, I treated Hajj as the point of no return. I gave myself five days (with preparation beforehand) to get my act together. I knew after Hajj this sort of vacation I had turned my life into would be over. Either Allah would snatch all my comforts away, or I would have to force myself into a new lifestyle. It ended up being a lot of both, alhamdullilah. I knew that Allah would only answer my prayers if I actually worked towards them. They wouldn’t just magically happen. So if I thought I was tired right now, just leaving Mina camp, I had no idea what kind of physical and emotional trials I was about to be lurched in to.





Disclaimer: Details accounted in this Hajj series are mostly by memory. If a mistake has been made, especially in explaining something incorrectly about Islam, please contact us so we may correct it. If you have any questions, please post or email them. We will do our best to answer them here or in future chapters. Also, all names used in this series are aliases and not the real names of the actual people.

Part II

After understanding the problem, how then do we learn to care for ourselves? First, realize that we have a choice not to participate in the culture; we can reclaim our bodies and redefine beauty for ourselves. Beauty is not a scarce resource; there is more than enough for everyone. As one sister put it, “ALLAH MADE ME BEAUTIFUL! He made me without any physical deformities that would make people think I was ugly in the traditional sense of the word, but even if I did have physical deformities, even if I had a full grown beard coming outta my chin, I WOULD BE BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE ALLAH MADE ME THAT WAY AND NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO QUESTION THE BEAUTY OF ALLAH’S CREATION!!” Allah created each and every one of us perfectly and beautifully, just how He wanted us.

People often think that in order to take care of their bodies they have to hate them, as if hate will motivate them to eat healthy and work out. This is like saying in order to do well in school you need to have no interest in the subject matter. It makes no sense: why would you take care of something you hate? Actually, self-love encourages excellent self-care, and this hateful thinking is also totally un-Islamic. Loving Allah’s magnificent creation is a way of showing love and gratitude to Allah.

As many women said in the survey, Allah entrusted us with our bodies, and it is our responsibility to care for that trust. This includes meeting our bodies’ physical needs, like nourishment, sleep, movement, etc., but also not hurting ourselves and treating our bodies with love, dignity and respect.

We need to take the focus off of weight and weight-loss. Many sisters talked about feeling fat, or wanting to lose weight. About 95% of people who lose weight on a diet regain it¹. Weight loss is not a sustainable goal for the vast majority of the population, but everyone can improve their health. Also focusing on weight excuses thin people. Healthy behaviors are healthy for everyone, and unhealthy behaviors are unhealthy for everyone, regardless of body size or shape.

Enjoy eating healthy. Overeating, under eating and eating a lot of less nutritious food does not support the care of the trust Allah gave us. The goal is to feel good, so when you are hungry, eat what makes you feel good, and stop when you are satiated. Dieting and restricting lead to unhealthy cravings and binging, so instead of outlawing foods, try to choose more nutritious foods. For some, learning how to eat this way can take a lot of time and practice, and patience, so have fun experimenting and pay attention to how different foods feel in your body.

Find enjoyable movement. Exercise is very health promoting, and just half an hour of moderate exercise three times a week is enough to reap the benefits. The RSF is one option, and if that works for you, great. However, the environment at the RSF does not exactly cultivate body love and self esteem. If that type of environment is not helpful, don’t go. Find something else you enjoy and that leaves you built up and feeling good. Even just walking around our beautiful campus three times a week is enough. Then, instead of focusing on target heart rates and calories burned, focus on the miracle that is you. Pay attention to how perfectly Allah created your body. Thank Allah and thank your body for being so perfect and amazing. Remember, the point is sustainability; if you enjoy eating healthy and moving your body, you are more likely to do it consistently².

Stop feeling guilty. All Allah asks from us is that we try move in the right direction. We don’t need to have arrived at some illusive notion of perfection. Allah loves it when we fall short because shortcomings are opportunities to see what doesn’t work, learn what does, and draw nearer to Allah. So be forgiving to yourself and others.

Support one another, stay positive, and watch what you say about yourselves and each other. Sometimes people can trigger bad feelings in others without even intending to, as one sister said, “even when people just discuss being healthy it will trigger other thoughts about my body not being perfect” If you talk about being, fat, ugly, or needing to go to the gym, you could inadvertently be really hurting someone else.

Although this article addressed women, all of these issues are very real for the men of our community. 15% of people with anorexia or bulimia are male³, and the toll this is taking on Muslim men should not be ignored. Men also have a choice not to participate in the devastating and destructive culture. It is possible for everyone to redefine beauty for themselves, their spouse, and their children. A beautiful dua of one of our sisters is, “O Allah make me beautiful to YOU.” And really, what else matters.

There is definitely more to be said about these issues. This is not an end, but inshaAllah the beginning of a larger conversation.

Originally published in Al-Bayan, UC Berkeley Muslim student publication

Abdullah ibn Al-Mubaarak narrates, “I went to Sufyaan ibn al-Uyaynah as the Day of Arafat was setting. He sat on his knees, his hands raised to the Heavens, and tears moistened his cheeks and beard. He turned and looked at me, so I asked him, ‘Amongst the people who have gathered here for Hajj, who is in the worst state?’

“Sufyaan ibn al-Uyaynah said, ‘He who thinks that Allah will not forgive him.’”

Hajj Day 1 – Completed
Purpose: Enter into the state of ihram, make your intention for Hajj, and spend the day in preparation for the journey of Hajj.
Location: Mina camps

Hajj Day 2 – Near completion
Purpose: To spend the afternoon from dhuhr to maghrib prayer times making du’aa and repenting to leave Arafat with all of our sins forgiven. Then to spend the night in Muzdalifah.
Location: The area of Arafat all day until sunset, then the area of Muzdalifah.

I finally understood how people who go into the military learn to be fully alert the moment they wake up from sleep – I learned to do the same at Hajj. I was jolted back to reality when someone shook me awake from one of the sweetest naps I had had on the entire Hajj trip. I sat upright in an instant, blinking away the rest of my sleep, adjusting my eyes to the darkness, trying to comprehend my surroundings, and most of all wondering what time it was.

A constant problem I had at Hajj was that I didn’t have a watch so I never knew the time. I think that’s what makes Hajj feel even longer. It’s not like Hajj is five days of doing different rituals and going to different places in Makkah. Hajj is more like one big long day comprising of sunrises and sunsets that are meaningless. All you pay attention to is the time for prayer so you don’t miss any. Besides that you sleep whenever you get a chance, you eat whenever you get food, and you go to the bathroom when most people are sleeping so you can avoid the long lines, regardless of if you even have to go.

It’s Hajj logic.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: In hindsight, I wish I had invested in a cheap strap on watch before going to Hajj. You need to know the time and clocks aren’t just hanging everywhere. The watch will come in handy.

So here I was with barely a couple of hours of sleep achieved, running on pure adrenaline – for which my body was working overtime to churn out. I ignored my brain notifying me I was hungry, sleepy, and fatigued. I just picked up my small duffel I had packed before going to sleep in case of a situation like this and began folding up my thin foam mattress I had been sleeping on. While doing so, one of our Hajj leaders was exclaiming, “Come on brothers and sisters, the buses are here!”

I grabbed my things and marched out of our Arafat tent under the starlit desert sky. I tried finding Abdullah thinking, “So which of these semi-brown-skinned, bald-headed, white-towel-enshrouded men is he?” I was too tired to try to distinguish him from the rest of the herd but I told myself, “It’s okay, the buses are here. They’ll take us to Muzdalifah where I can go back to sleep for another few hours until it’s fajr prayer time.”

Oh the lies one tells to keep one’s hope up!

Recap: Day 1 we went from Makkah to Mina and spent the night there in camp. Day 2 we went to Arafat bright and early in the morning, spent the entire day there, and then we were working on going to Muzdalifah to spend the night there before returning back to Mina.

Our Hajj group marched as a crowd to where the buses were pulling up to take Hajjis to Muzdalifah. We lined up behind another one or two groups who were waiting there before us. Staring at the two hundred other men and women standing in front of us my brain registered the thought: yes, the buses are here, but they’re not for us.

At that point all I could think about was going back to sleep. I was feeling dizzy, hungry, and thirsty too. It would be okay, I kept telling myself. The buses will be here before we would know it.

We stood and we stood and we stood.

While I stood there silently reminding myself to be patient with my situation, a man from another Hajj group fainted. A few people gathered around him, giving him water and helping him sit up.

I took the cue from Allah and decided around that time to just sit down on the dirt. I put down my duffel, put my folded up foam mattress on top, and then sat.

During our long wait some of the brothers in our Hajj group decided to entertain everybody. One of them was standing towards the back of our “line” (i.e., crowd) and the other a bit towards the front. The one in the back started chanting as loud as he could, “LABAYK ALLAHUMA LABAYK, LABAYKA LA SHAREEKA LAKA LABAYK, INNALHAMDA WA NI’AMATA LAKA WAL MULK, LAA SHAREEKA LAK!” A few brothers joined in helping him.

Then the brother in the front of the group responded to him but he was one and his voice was faint, “Labayk Allahuma labayk, labayka la shareeka laka labayk…” He could barely be heard but the two of them kept going back and forth. Everyone’s heads turned towards the rear to listen to that brother’s talbiyyah and when he would finish, everyone would eagerly turn towards the front to see if the single brother was going to retaliate this time too. He always did.

I thought that was tight. The quiet but persistent voice praising Allah. That probably resonates within so many of us, when we were down we still tried no matter how small we felt against our distresses. The sound of our faith always rung out against the clamor of our internal wars.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Squeeze every last drop out of your Hajj experience by constantly reflecting. Hajj is about so much more than the rituals. It’s also about everything in between which will help you gain the most out of it.

Finally the talbiyyah battle wound down and everyone was happy to have passed the time somehow. May Allah always reward those two brothers for helping calm us with the remembrance of Allah during such a tiresome and stressful time, ameen.

But I still wasn’t feeling very well. On top of the dizziness, now my nose started feeling stuffy too. So Abdullah and I left the crowd, it felt good to leave such a claustrophobic place. I felt like I could finally breathe again.

We found a tent which had several men in it but we found a secluded spot to lie down. I couldn’t sleep but it just felt good to close my eyes for a little while. I quickly realized this wouldn’t be very comfortable because ants were biting us so we moved away from that area but it seems the ants did too because they continued feasting on our bodies.

I believe this was at Muzdalifah. The picture was taken from inside the bus.

It didn’t matter much because soon someone from our group came and got us to tell us to board the bus. We walked out to the crowd and realized the bus situation was a lie once again. Whatever bus had been there had already left and it didn’t look like the gathering was any smaller.

I put my belongings down and began tearing open my duffel for the small white box I had put away earlier that afternoon that was supposed to be one of our two meals of the day. In it I found a tiny cake with a dollop of jelly inside of it, dry cereal like Corn Flakes, a little box of milk, and a friend had given me a date cookie. I ate the cookie and the little cake even though that wasn’t what I was in the mood for but I knew I needed the energy badly.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Re-energize whenever the opportunity presents itself. Know that you are human and you have a few basic needs such as rest and food. Sleep when you can, or at least lie down or sit down, and eat when you can. Even if all you have is one tiny cookie. Just eat it. Allah will provide more food for you when you get hungry again. Take care of yourself now with what Allah has given you; Allah will take care of you later.

At last, the bus came. They called on all the sisters to go first with their husbands. We filed into the bus and each sister, since we all get to sit while half of the brothers stand, sat with three or four bags and mattresses in her lap to make more standing room for the brothers.

The bus started moving and I was feeling more claustrophobic with three foam mattresses in my face. I would look up time to time only to find a man towards the front of the bus had decided to take off the towel that was covering his shoulders so now I could see his sweaty, hairy back. I almost gagged so I looked down and vowed to not look up again. I don’t have a problem with that guy half undressing and under normal circumstances I would’ve just looked away and not thought about it again. The problem was that I was feeling sick, I was fatigued, I’m naturally weak, the bus was stuffed, there was no wiggle room, every one of us stank, the windows were shut, and I felt like fainting or throwing up. I didn’t feel I could do this much longer.

While I was telling myself to stay calm and continue breathing in and out, I heard a sister scream. I looked up to the front of the bus and found a sister I had become friends with in the last couple of days standing there and hyperventilating. Oh my God, I thought, what happened?! Is she okay? Do we have a doctor on the bus?

Her husband got her to sit back down and he and another man started giving her water and using a prayer rug to fan her off. I presumed the exhaustion of the day along with the heat of the stuffy bus had gotten to her. It could’ve happened to any of us.

Fenced area surrounding the camping ground of Muzdalifah.

When the bus finally screeched to a halt and the doors squeakily slid open I felt like I could finally breathe again. One by one we filed out of the bus, passing along duffel bags and foam mattresses, piling them outside between the bus and a wire fence enclosing Hajjis sleeping or at least trying to. We had finally reached Muzdalifah at midnight or just past midnight.

Clearer view of camping ground of Muzdalifah. (It's actually a huge place, this is just a fraction of it. This is where we stayed.)

We were all standing around waiting for some direction when a bunch of the brothers started to form a row for prayer. On this second day of Hajj, we are supposed to pray dhuhr and ‘asr prayers combined and shortened at the camping area of Arafat and then we pray the maghrib and isha prayers combined and shortened in the camping area of Muzdalifah.

I was glad I made my wudu when we were still in Arafat so I didn’t need to go on a water/bathroom hunt here in the middle of no man’s land. A few sisters and I opened up and laid down our foam mattresses so we could do our prostrations on them.

Our Hajj group brothers praying maghrib and isha, shortened and combined, at Muzdalifah.

After prayer there was more sitting and standing around. Hajj is all about the waiting game. Waiting for buses, waiting for directions, waiting in lines, waiting for food, waiting for a chance to sleep, waiting for a chance to shower. You’ll never have as much time to kill as you do at Hajj. I think in some secret way, Hajj is actually meant to be about all that time you have when you’re sitting there doing nothing. It’s when we have too much time on our hands that we’re prone to thinking and doing bad deeds. With idle time we’ll start thinking about how a certain guy has been annoying us the whole day and eventually such thoughts coupled with the fatigue and stress of the day can turn into heated arguments and perhaps even worse.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Take advantage of your free time. That is when you will have the most opportunities to help others or say/do something bad. Keep away from sins during these five integral days of your life by exhausting the leisure minutes with good conversation and lending a hand to people. If nothing else, take out your handy dandy journal and start writing and reflecting or remembering Allah.

After about a half an hour wait one of our Hajj leaders came up to us and said, “Just go inside the fenced area and find any space you can and sleep.” No one questioned anything in that sentence because he said the one thing we all wanted to hear: sleep. We went in and some of the brothers found a big space so we briskly walked in between people’s slumbering bodies to claim it by spreading out our mattresses over it.

Entering the fenced area of Muzdalifah so we could finally sleep.

I put mine down next to a sea of Turkish women. (My personal statistic: Fifty-percent of Hajjis are Turks. Everywhere you turn you see Turkish groups and they all travel under one Hajj group called Milli Gorus – they have their own buses, ambulances, and hotels. I promised myself when I got back from Hajj I would look up what their name meant so here it is. All of their women look the same and wear the same neon green hijaab every day. You can’t miss ‘em. They practically own Makkah and Madinah during Hajj time.) Sorry for the tangent. Anyway, then Abdullah put his sleeping bag next to me and a couple of women from our group put theirs at my feet. Then one of their husbands came and put his mattress down diagonally from my feet. That felt a little awkward but I quickly got over it… Until another ten brothers joined our cozy little group by putting down their mattresses all around us. The only barrier between me and them was my husband’s body. Now this felt very awkward.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Don’t wear contacts at Hajj. Your hands aren’t very clean most of the time, you usually can’t wash them with soap, so it’ll be a twenty minute escapade just going to the faucets to clean your hands, clean your contacts, and make sure one doesn’t accidentally drop because someone pushed you. Remember you’re in the desert and dust is always flying in your face. You’ll be grateful if you have glasses protecting your eyes.

But oh well. I lied down on my mattress in my abaya, scarf, and glasses and put my duffel under my head to use as a pillow. It was very high and not quite the fluffiest pillow in the world but in such a state of exhaustion and depleted energy, my body didn’t seem to care. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow – I mean – duffel.



Disclaimer: Details accounted in this Hajj series are mostly by memory. If a mistake has been made, especially in explaining something incorrectly about Islam, please contact us so we may correct it. If you have any questions, please post or email them. We will do our best to answer them here or in future chapters. Also, all names used in this series are aliases and not the real names of the actual people.

Ibn al Sammak said to Al-Rashid when asked to be brought a cup of drinking water:

“Commander of the faithful, if this drink were refused to you, how much would you offer to get it?”

“My entire kingdom,” replied al-Rashid.

“Commander of the faithful,” continues the other, “if you found that you could not pass water from your body, how much would you sacrifice to be able to do so?”

“My entire kingdom,”

“O lord of the believers, how can you boast of a kingdom which is not worth as much as a little urine and a few mouthfuls of water?”

Water, water, I need water. That’s all I could think as I stumbled over the rocks jutting out of the mountain, with dirt covering my abaya and hands. It was so hot it felt like the sun was sitting directly on top of my head. I didn’t dare to look up, afraid if I saw the sun I would surely melt away.

I was sweating, my throat was dry, and standing on the side of the mountain looking down to our tent back in the Arafat camp my hope began to evaporate in the heat as well. I had only been on the mountain for about an hour saying my prayers for myself, my family, my friends, anyone who had sent me requests to pray for them, and even people who hadn’t asked me to pray for them but I could remember there were a few things I could ask Allah for today that would benefit them. I got done with all of the prayers and had meant to stay there on that mountain that whole day until dusk but my body clearly could no longer handle it – not without a cooler of water, a granola bar, and an umbrella.

Mountain ranges around our Arafat camp site.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Water, water, water. Always have it with you no matter where you go. And if you’re going to be silly and adventurous like me on days like Arafat, have LOTS of water, some fruits or granola bars to eat, and an umbrella to shade you from the sun if you can’t sit in an already shaded area.

I tried to rush down as fast as I could without tripping and rolling down the mountain. I looked down at my cushioned midnight blue Champion slippers, or chapals as I liked to call them in Urdu, and wished I had worn boots with good grip in the soles. “Well, you’re supposed to be using your energy praying, not climbing mountains!” I told myself. As we made our way down, I made sure to steer clear of a huge camel standing around the area which had a colorful décor set on its one large hump. A man was walking the camel around, allowing people to sit on it and take pictures, making money off of the whole ordeal. I looked at the people taking turns sitting on the seat within the décor on the camel’s back and wondered why oh why on earth they were wasting these few precious hours of the Day of Arafat on this. But oh well. I refocused reminding myself I need to worry about myself and not others – my Afterlife was at stake too.

More mountains around our camp.

Abdullah and I finally made it down the mountainside but we still had to cross a road. We jogged across half the road to avoid oncoming traffic, waited for the next half to clear up, then jogged again. We made it to the dirt shoulder of the road and then we had to go through a small opening in the fence but there was a group of Malaysians filing through to come out of the fenced area. A crowd was forming behind Abdullah and I of people trying to get back into the camping grounds.

Finally someone from behind us forced his way through the fence before the entire Malaysian group could get through and then everyone else from our side of the fence was following suit. Abdullah grabbed me and put me in front of the fence next saying, “Come on, if we don’t go now we won’t get through.”

And more mountains.

I was scared going through that little fence opening because on the right side was solid ground but on the left side, if I misplaced just one step, was pure nothing. The hill dropped off right there and I would fall fifteen feet onto a pile of rocks. On top of that, I’m afraid of heights. With sweat pouring down, not from the heat as much as the tension of not falling and the crowd from both sides of the fence pushing at me to go through so they could also, I finally stepped through and almost pushed into some of the Malaysian women on the right to ensure I didn’t fall over the edge. Then Abdullah stepped through and I looked at what lay ahead still between myself and our tent and felt dread overcome me.

Abdullah quickly passed me up and made his way down the steep slope and then looked up at me to see how little I had budged. Climbing the slope earlier when we went up to the mountain on the other side of the road was one thing. Going back down was going to be more grueling for me in my useless comfort chapals.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Chapals (Urdu for slippers or sandals) are very important at Hajj. A good pair of shoes/sandals/slippers are integral for your ease at Hajj. We bought ours at Payless, buy one get one half off, Champion brand, two pairs for each of us because your sandals can easily get lost or stolen. Just keep in mind you will do MILES of walking one day after the next. Wear something comfortable.

I took a deep breath and promised myself I wouldn’t fall and meet death on the sharp rocks below; I could do this. I slowly made my way down, trying to place my feet on the biggest rocks I could find, but sometimes I wouldn’t have that luxury and would have to plant my feet on nothing but dirt or a bunch of small pebbles. This would cause me to slip and start sliding down with no way to control myself so I hurled my body weight to face the slope of the hill rather than the base and I would sort of fall over onto the hill, grip it with my hands and then slowly make my way down using one of my hands with my feet. (Scaredy cat? Fine, say what you will. I just didn’t want to spend one of the most important days of my life in the clinic because of my clumsiness.)

The steep hill at which I risked my life. =P

Finally I made it down in one piece, covered in dirt. (Good thing I was wearing a creamy light brown abaya that day.)

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Think carefully about what you’re going to wear during your Hajj stay. I had these awesome, comfortable abayas I bought from Pakistan, but they were an utter fail when it came to letting air pass through them. Sitting in the desert I started to feel like I was suffocating in my clothes. A thin Pakistani shalwaar-kameez would’ve been a better choice at least for this one day.

This escapade made me even thirstier than ten minutes ago when I was atop the mountain on the other side of the road so I went inside our tent and my friends looked at my reddened face and affirmed their beliefs that I was crazy to go out there in the heat on top of that mountain. I said nothing. I just headed for the ice water cooler and poured out a drink for myself, gulped it down, then poured another, gulped, another, gulp, another, gulp. I couldn’t stop drinking the water. Then I poured some water down my shirt and on my face and hands and arms.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Later on when I talked to some family members in Pakistan who have gone to Hajj, they told me they took a dolly with cases of water bottles on it to Arafat and Muzdalifah. If you can do something like this it will be one of the most worthwhile investments.

I never realized how much of a blessing water was until I came to Hajj. Spending so much time out in the desert, under the scorching sun, it really puts one of our most vital needs into perspective. Did I really have to travel halfway across the world to understand this?

Yes, yes I did. I knew I never would have understood this living at home or even visiting my family in Pakistan. In Karachi, there had been summers when we would have little water but we could always make do. We could always run over to the corner store to buy bottled water, no big deal. But at Arafat, there are no stores. You’re in the middle of the desert and all the people around you are just here to pray and pray and pray their hearts out. There is no time to for buying and selling. It’s almost as if life comes to a halt.

I rested a little while and talked to my friends about how their first hour had been. Everyone was terribly hot and the high temperature was making them sleepy. These were the worst four hours of our lives for us to fall asleep during. Some people were napping though and told others to wake them up later if they keep sleeping. The heat was truly unbearable.

I thought I knew heat. I lived in Saudi Arabia and I remember the sun and how it’s so dry you can barely grow anything. Now I live in Houston, where summer temperatures easily hit over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I also have family in Karachi I visit from time to time. It’s also blazing hot, especially when it’s the middle of June and all the electricity goes out so the fans and AC don’t work for hours at a time.

But this day, the day of Arafat, was something else. We could be under the shade but it wouldn’t protect us from the heat. We could drink water but it wouldn’t quench our thirsts. It was impossible to rescue ourselves.

At a time like this, in a situation like this, I couldn’t help but think about the Day of Judgment when the sun will be above us and we’ll be standing there naked with sweat rising around us depending upon how many sins we committed. I couldn’t help thinking about how I had just thought of how the sun felt like it was sitting upon my head and that’s exactly how close the sun will be to us on the Day of Judgment. I couldn’t help thinking how I felt I couldn’t escape from the heat and that’s exactly how it’ll be on the Day of Judgment.

Only those who will be under the shade of Allah’s Throne will be saved from it.

This day of Arafat, this wasn’t just to forgive our sins. I don’t think anyone can leave that mountain and think to himself or herself that they’re saved from the Hellfire and go on living a kickback lifestyle. I think everyone leaves it shuddering, remembering the heat and the struggle of the day of Arafat and knowing this is probably one ten-thousandth of what the Day of Judgment will be like. I think everyone leaves the mountain of Arafat knowing all their sins have been forgiven but still begging Allah for His Mercy.

Halfway through the day our Hajj leader stood up to deliver a speech. We already had the sermon about two hours ago so I figured the reason for this speech was to re-motivate everyone, remind them of how important this day is.

He told us things we already know but as the Qur’an says, the reminder benefits the believers. He spoke of how much mercy Allah has for His servants and how much Allah loves us. I liked his speech because I feel like we don’t talk enough about love. Allah loves us, that’s why He helps us and is always working to save us. We talk so much about Allah’s attributes of Mercy and Forgiveness but we forget about Al-Wadud, the Most Loving.

Our Hajj leader told us of the story of the woman who once lost her child. She frantically searched for the child and could not find him. When she finally did, she was crying and quickly picked the child up and began nursing immediately right then and there. Prophet Muhammed (sal Allahu ‘alayhi wasallam) turned to his companions and said, “Do you see that woman there? Do you think she will ever throw her child in a pit of fire?” The companions immediately answered that of course she wouldn’t. Then the Prophet (sal Allahu ‘alayhi wasallam) told them that Allah loves His creation even more than that woman loves her child.

Allah will do everything to help us, to protect us, to save us from the Hellfire. He doesn’t want us to go there; He wants us to come to Him. He wants to meet us in the Paradise He created not for Himself, but for us. He wants to show us His Face and what blessing is greater than that?

Our leader went on to tell us how much potential each one of us has. We can do great things with our lives. He reminded us when we go back home from Hajj we shouldn’t waste our time but instead do something productive. We all have the ability to do it and now we’re at a place during a time we can be and should be praying for anything and everything. Pray for Allah to make us capable of such great feats and insha’Allah He will help us make them realities.

The speech finished around 3:30pm, and at this time we were getting our first meal of the day. I saw the food boxes and all I could think was, “CALORIES!” (I know it’s corny but at Hajj I learned to eat according to what will give me the most amount of calories, not what’s healthier for me like the way I eat at home.) Hajj was so exhausting that I would eat whatever I got, no matter how bad it tasted and I tried to always lick my tray clean but over the course of the days my stomach got so small I sometimes couldn’t even finish one small aluminum tray.

After all the women received their two meals and drinks, I opened up my aluminum tray eagerly with so much delicacy that not a grain of rice could fall from it. I saw the disappointed expressions on many people’s faces as they opened up their trays. Some even covered their trays back up and put them aside. I understood why they did so when I uncovered mine. It was plain yellow rice with two or three pieces of hardened meat on top which was mostly bone. Talk about dry.

I looked past what it was though and said silently, “Calories. I need energy. This is all we have for the rest of today and even tomorrow morning.” I dug my plastic spoon in and started shoveling the rice into my mouth. Since the meat couldn’t be broken into with my spoon, I just picked it up by the bone and started tearing it apart using my teeth. It didn’t take long for my stomach to become full and my mouth to become dry from the meal. I still had half of my tray left so I covered it to eat it later. I also carefully set aside the second meal we received in a small white box which carried breakfast items. Now my mission was to find a clean plastic cup, fill it with water from one of the orange coolers, rehydrate myself, and get back out there and start saying my prayers.

I went to the orange cooler that was closest to my little mattress and saw that women were putting their small cylindrical cans of soda inside of it. I was puzzled for a second and then they looked at me and said, “We’re keeping our drinks cold; they gave them to us hot.” I knew that, but I didn’t care. What were the rest of us supposed to do for water?

But they didn’t stop there, they continued saying, “And sister, you shouldn’t be drinking out of this cooler anyway. We saw them filling it and they’re using the bathroom water. Do you want to drink it and have germs in your mouth?”

I think they expected me to thank them for such a grand favor they were doing for me, protecting me from germs and all, but I just said, “Oh,” and started backing away looking for another cooler. I told Abdullah later it’s a good thing he told me not to argue with anyone since it would be useless and would mess up my Hajj experience because I sort of felt like telling those people off saying, “I would much rather take a risk getting a stomach ache tomorrow than end up fainting from dehydration or heat stroke on one of the most important days of my life.”

Instead I walked away and I found another cooler, opened the lid to peek inside and see if anyone had put their cans in this one too. They hadn’t, thank God. I filled my cup about three times and sat there drinking. Then I tiptoed around everyone’s mattresses to get back to mine and I sat there saying my prayers because I wasn’t quite ready to go back out into the blazing sun just yet.

Lights coming on at the Arafat camp as the sun set.

After a while, as the minutes crept closer to maghrib prayer time, I finally went outside fearsomely only to find that it was significantly cooler now that a shade had been cast across the camp. I went back to the steep hill I had climbed down on the way back to camp from the mountain and sat on the most rounded rock I could find. I put the pages of prayers I had written down for myself to remember to say while at Arafat in my lap and cupped my hands together to pray, like a beggar pleading with the Only One Who could hear and answer my calls.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Make a prayer list and carry it around with you so you can always remember to pray for the things most important to you and those you love. One of the Hajj take-aways is to continue doing back home what you already were doing at Hajj.

I sat at a slight angle so that I would be facing towards the Kabah. I saw others standing beneath a barren tree positioned in the same direction saying their prayers.

Then I saw all the tents below our tent. Row upon row of them, holding thousands of pilgrims, all carrying their hands before them to say their prayers.

Other Hajjis squeezing in their last few prayers before the call for maghrib prayer time.

It was like we were this one massive praying force. Praying our hearts out. Pleading to Allah in all the ways we knew how. Begging for His Infinite Mercy. Asking of Him to let us leave this mountain stronger than we were before we came to it. Let us go back to our old lives as renewed believers, as better citizens of our hometowns, as better friends and family members, and most of all as better servants of God.

I knew maghrib prayer time was fast approaching. I tried to not look at the darkness that fell throughout the Arafat campgrounds with despair.  I just focused on making the most of what time I had left. Wasn’t that, after all, the way we were supposed to live life as a whole? Taking advantage of every moment despite knowing death would creep upon us one day?

When the call for the sunset prayer had been sounded, I wrapped up my prayers and stood to go back to our tent. (I wasn’t going in to pray though because the maghrib and isha prayers are supposed to be prayed combined at Muzdalifah, not at Arafat.) After about another hour or so, I was lying on my thin mattress spread across the earth fast asleep. It was the suppressed exhaustion of the entire day finally releasing itself. I didn’t know it then but the short slumber would be much needed for the events that still lay ahead. Hajj was far from over.

Disclaimer: Details accounted in this Hajj series are mostly by memory. If a mistake has been made, especially in explaining something incorrectly about Islam, please contact us so we may correct it. If you have any questions, please post or email them. We will do our best to answer them here or in future chapters. Also, all names used in this series are aliases and not the real names of the actual people.