hmm

Today I just got up from praying maghrib to found myself encapsulated in a strange and unexpected sense of peace and contentment. It feels like a hot summers evening here, I can hear some of our arab neighbours sitting on their balconies chitchatting away. The atmosphere reminds me of Bangladesh. Both my dadas house and Nanas, on evenings without electricity, where the family, neighbours etc would leave their tasks and just sit around outside to escape the heat. There would be such a serenity about it all…or maybe its just the glasses I was looking through, coloured with childhood and youth and the minuteness of problems. But I like to believe it wasn’t just that.

From what I hear, the average Jordanian isn’t well off. Everyday is a struggle to make ends meet especially with the recent rocketing prices of fuel and groceries. A lot of men have a second taxi-driving job on top of their regular jobs. Just the other day we met a taxi driver who went to university in England and can speak nearly 5 languages and was probably in his sixties. Yet he was still having to work extremely hard to finance his grown up children’s’ university educations.
What amazes me is the strength and faith these people have in Allahs will and ways, even the average joe blog who’s not seemingly religious and is smoking and blasting the most ridiculous music out of his cab.

In Bangladesh too, its amazing how much resolve the average people can have amidst their material poverty and unstable environment.

Just makes me think how an atmosphere made of believers and people of faith (and I don’t mean the super religious, just the ‘commoners’) can be so much more enriched compared to one that is materially well off yet lacking in godliness