You've got a friend?

4.30 am seems to be a favourite time for Salma to wake-up for a midnight snack! And so, here I am again, blabberring away until its time for Subh.

I'm at this juncture now. A juncture where I desperately need a friend. I seemed to be surrounded with people all the time and now happily contented with my present life. But there is a hole in my heart, yearning for a sisterly friendship that will help me become a better person.
I shared this with my husband recently. (I don't know why I always start with 'I', a teacher pointed that out in high school...sorry if it's bothering anyone..hehehe). Apparently, dear husband also had the same problem for a long time. And since we're both away from our birth places, the search becomes harder.

We tried to find friends. First of all, we look for people with the same background, i.e, same country, same background, same languages, etc. It doesn't always work. Although we appreciate the company, the familiar taste and sound, we are still thirsty of good companionship (besides each other lahhh). Or are we being choosy? Hmmm, even if we are, I think we have the right to. Prophet Muhammad (saw) said, Good friends are like perfume**

What am I looking for really, is a new best friend. A sister. Someone I can share things with, and look up to at the same time. Someone who can guide and teach me what she knows, but we can also move along together learning and unpeeling new things. We can debate, we can disect new information or old, but we will not get sick of it. She is someone full of life, someone who never waste her time, except on knowledge and people she loves.

I found one in Fatimazahra, a French-Morrocan lady, just a couple of years elder than me. Her life path and mine are so similar it was uncanny. Our first child was even born at the same time, just 3 days apart. Our first meeting was brief, we knew each other for about 3 months in SG when she was teaching me Arabic back in August 2002. What I didn't know then was that, I need to learn to read Arabic before I can learn the language. She was very understanding and offered to teach me Arabic letters on another day at her posh Mohammad Sultan Road apartment. Not a cent was traded between me and her, but just knowledge and friendship. In Ramadhan, she was first to guide me to do Tarawikh without making me feel small at all. She kept me beside her and gave me gestures on when to do what during the solah without making it obvious or embarassing me.

I love her so much for all that she shared with me in a short time and pray that Allah will bless her always. But time and distance have caused us to be away from each other. Her husband is now posted to Alexandria, Egypt and alhamdulillah, on my last trip there to visit in-laws, we managed to meet up in Cairo and spent the whole day together. Giggling like young girls whilst carrying our 4 month olds and later in the evening, she asked me to make a pact with her to make a complain against the management of the grand Four Seasons Hotel's Shopping Arcade because their female solah area was just carpets under some stair case! It was all too fast, and we have to bid goodbye to each other again.

Now I wish for someone like Fatimazahra to appear in my life again. How I longed those conversations we have had. Those experiences we shared. Fatimazahra is the sort of person who touches the people she meet and knew. Even her personal driver was so fond and full of respect for her. She doesn't demand it, she just deserves it.

At this juncture, where I have taken the other route and left all my friends there, it is so lonely. I'm not a great person, I'm weak, I'm scared, etc. But I want so much for all my friends to be on this route too, to grow together. I guess I'm the sort who when I find something, I want to share it with everybody I know, and I cannot understand it when they refuse it. I cannot comprehend that they are just like...Me, 3 years ago. I cannot keep quiet when I see that people I used to love are making wrong decisions in their lives now. But when I say something against it, it will be like...'Yeah, but you were also..bla bla bla..' or 'Yeah, you're different now', or worst by far I've received recently was 'You go your own way, I go my own way, MYOB'. I cried silently. This was very painful. This came from a good friend. Or so I thought. (I'm sure whatever I'm suffering from now, is nothing compared to what Rasullullah saw has suffered after he received revelation from Allah through Angel Gabriel).

Now I just let days pass, and I keep myself busy with what I have to do. But it would have been sweeter if there was a friend on the same path, same route, as we think and plan for the next step based on the same principles without compromise. I don't want to engage in conversations where I have to pretend that whats wrong is right. I don't want to sit around friends who should be at home attending to their husbands and taking care of their children who hardly sees them. I don't want to listen to silly and forbidden love stories. I don't want to be part of all that, yet, they were, and will always be a part of who I was.

**Prophet Muhammad (saw) said in a hadith narrated by Al-Bukhari and Muslim : The likeness of the good companion and a bad one, is the likeness of the perfume bearer, and the bellow blower. So, the perfume bearer will either give you some, buy of him, or get a nice smell of him. But the bellow blower will either burn your cloth, or you will get a bad smell of him.