Salaam alaikum,
Shakespeare said ““Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man’s son doth know.”
So have so many journey’s been started this month… specifically my good friend Sharky’s journey as a Muslim spouse and Egyptians wife.
After throwing a small get together where everyone showed up way more than fashionably late or didn’t show at all. I spent the night at Sharky’s since it would be more practical than me getting up after only an hour of sleep to drive over to her place to pick her up and then drop her at the airport.
So I grabbed my thermarest, pillow, prayer rug, a change of clothes and my tooth brush threw in it the car.. and drove with my friends Sharky and Nik back to her apartment. After a small side detour to drop off a rug to Nik’s place with Nik.
We had a crazy run in with a random Muslim guy.. I had doubled parked to let Nik and Sharky unload.. only to watch a crazy person.. back up against traffic, then pull up next to my car. So first I am thinking.. this guy.. now that I know its a guy.. and Muslim.. is crazy. He then starts staring at me. Which I learned growing up.. you never let someone stare you down.. its just a street smart thing you learn.. your on the El.. someone is giving you the hairy eye ball.. you stare them down. Thus you earn the dominate status over that person.. its a psychological thing plus bonus is they stop staring at you.
So.. after watching more insane people attempt to park, honk and/or double park in the time it took them to move the rug from my car to the apartment.. Sharky and I pull away from the apartment building and stop at the light.
Crazy Muslim guy pulls up along side my car- motions for us to roll down the window and then asks.. “Have you heard about the magazine launch at the Shia masjid?” I just said, ” No.” Because I had no idea what this guy was talking about.. and why do I want to be talking with a strange man with a weird idea of how the rules of the road should be interpreted?
Sharky being the more friendly one.. replies with,” Yeah.. the masjids a left and two blocks down.” The I get burn some rubber out there to score princess parking in front of Sharky’s building.
I walk in and surprisingly nothing is packed. I offered to help but I was gently rebuffed. So eventually I settled in and then kept Sharky entertained by reading a romance novel aloud to her as she packed. Then I went to sleep around 1 ish till 4:30 am. I got up packed.. threw my stuff in the car. And promptly locked myself out of her building and I couldn’t remember the code to the front door. So I spent around 20 minutes trying to in put variations of the code while trying to Skype, IM – as I had left my phone in the apartment.
Finally around 5:30- we loaded the car and by 6 am we were on the road for her 7:18 am flight to JFK. I took the route to OAK.. because I forgot the flight was actually out of SFO. Opps.. to I had to channel all the skills of every Egyptian taxi driver I had ever seen and break every speed limit on the highways I was on to make it to the airport by 6:48am. I also got to watch the sunrise over SF and the San Mateo bridge which I had never travelled across ever.
Whew. I got out and helped unload the bags.. and the skycaps wanted to charge $125 per bag that was over weight! Outrageous. Given First Class has no weight limit at all.
I then drove over the bridge back towards home.. stopped for gas and then got home and crawled into bed till around 10 – 11 am. After making dua Sharky made her connecting flight at JFK to Cairo.
American Muslimahs Musings 