Istanbul, 2017
I decided I wanted to do something different with my life.
I was tired of working in the legal field, and so I enrolled for a TEFL course to teach English as a foreign language. And then I decided it might be a good idea to teach in a foreign country to gain some international experience.
I was heading for my mid-forties at this time, so this decision to switch careers and head overseas surprised me almost as much as my family and friends when they heard the news. I don’t know what a midlife crisis is, but I’m guessing that if I was going to encounter one, this was probably it.
Yaseen and Waseem were around 16 and 13 years old respectively at the time and quite capable of doing most things for themselves. And despite Mujeeb (their dad) and I being divorced, he was still very much a hands-on dad, so he agreed to look after the boys for the few months I would be away.
I managed to secure a teaching post in Istanbul that was short-term, and after a lovely ‘bon voyage’ party, plenty of farewell gifts and many tears (mostly my own), I headed off in September 2017 to begin my 4 month contract.
Although the company I was contracted to offered communal housing, I negotiated on a slightly higher salary on condition I would find my own accommodation. It was a struggle to find reasonable short term accommodation, but by end September I’d managed to secure a small place. So I paid my deposit…and then promptly lost it when I to decided cancel the lease.
After less than a month of being in Istanbul, I chose to pack up my bags and return home. Making the decision to return home wasn’t easy, but for me it felt like the right decision.
Being in my forties, I’d like to think that being older gave me the advantage of having better common sense. I knew myself well, and my faith and morality was at a point where I could at least tell when something didn’t feel quite right.
Istanbul is a really beautiful city. It’s filled with so much history and culture and just walking around the city, it’s hard not to be amazed by the Mosques and buildings of centuries-old. And I loved Istanbul. But still, I felt uneasy. And the reason why I felt uneasy was because my conscience, my soul, felt uneasy.
The devil will come at you on a normal day and even more so when you’re vulnerable. Leaving behind my children, my family and friends, my home and security, I was in a sense, vulnerable. I desired to make new friends, to find a new home and to integrate into a culture that was different to my own. And I could sense the devil whispering, that compromising on my principles to integrate and settle in would be acceptable… to just ‘live a little!’.
Well if the devil came at me, then there was something pushing him back. It was something I regarded as normal, a usual routine, my daily practice for the day. Salaah.
Regardless what was going on around me, I held on firmly to my five daily prayers, my salaah. Whether me and my girlfriends were planning our dinners, shopping sprees or sightseeing outings, or whether I was at work busy with tasks, everything needed to accommodate for it.
So I’ll try to explain, in my mind, how it played out: the devil would whisper to me, but then I would need to pray Thuhr salaah. Then he’d whisper again, and by then I would need to pray ‘Asr. And then he’d try yet again, but it would be Maghrib and time for me to pray yet again.
And so it frequently went – temptation manifested itself, but I was connecting to Allah SWT five times a day. And it was this connection with Allah SWT that allowed my soul to feel uneasy. But if the soul is uneasy, then it’s simply a matter of time before one has to confront the reason for it.
There was this one particular night in Istanbul, I was praying the evening prayer of Isha’. My attention was very focused on Surah Fatiha (the opening chapter of the Qur’an) and its meaning. I was, with intent, asking Allah SWT to guide me to the straight path. I was confused, wondering whether to stay on in Istanbul or rather just quit and return home after a few short weeks. How would it look to my family and friends, me returning home after barely a month? Like a failure? I didn’t have the answer.
And then the guidance of Allah (SWT) came in a most unexpected way.
Before I had left for Istanbul, my family had gifted me with a farewell card. The card had a picture of a flower and each petal of the flower was embossed with the painted fingerprint of a family member. Handmade, with love.The card had laid unopened in my bag until that day, almost three weeks after I had arrived in Istanbul, a day when the confusion was overwhelming me and my heart felt extremely unsettled.
I sat down on the bed and opened the card, just needing to be reminded of home. Inside the card was a note written by my brother-in-law, who is also an Islamic scholar.
I started to read:
“May Allah (SWT) take you safely, keep you safe and bring you back home safely! May Allah (SWT) keep you in His divine protection throughout your stay, may He make your stay in Turkey a pleasant and enjoyable one.
We leave you with the Dua from the Prophetic Sunnah:
‘O Allah, we seek refuge in You lest we misguide others, or we are misguided by others, lest we cause others to err or we are caused to err, lest we abuse others or be abused, and lest we behave foolishly or meet with the foolishness of others’ (Abu Dawood)
‘May Allah (SWT) make piety part of your journey, forgive your sins and fulfil the purpose of the journey. (Tirmithi)
‘O Allah (SWT) let her journey be covered quickly and most easily. (Tirmithi)”
And there it was – my ‘guidance to the straight path’ that I prayed for with every salaah. It had come to me in this most unexpected way. But the message was there and the answer for me was clear.
To avoid misguidance, erring or any foolishness, I needed to return home.