Tom Facchine – Medina Story – Walking to The Prophets Masjid

So when I first got to Medina, I

tested out a level one for the Arabic

Institute, and that's no amazing feat. Like, it's

not, like, a big deal. A lot of

people do it. But because of that, it

put me

in night classes. Like, they didn't have the

ability to have all of us doing classes

during the morning like was typical. So for

whatever reason, Mostwathani, for the Arabic Institute, they

had us in night classes, which is very,

very challenging,

because they didn't really have the bus system

up and running yet or anything, and I

was also living off campus. We asked when

I arrived, there were there was no space

for us in the university on campus.

So the university was renting these other buildings

on the opposite side of the city. So

they had to coordinate buses and stuff like

that.

We were patient and we made the best

of it.

One of the opportunities that presented itself from

that was that we could go to the

prophet's masjid for Fajr,

and there's, you know, Quran, halakas, and stuff

like that after Fajr.

But since we're

out in, you know,

East Jibbit or whatever, you know, we don't

have any buses taking us. Normally, if you

live on campus, there's buses that take you

to the prophet Masjid for, you know, lessons

in the evening. We didn't have that. So,

for the first little bit, nobody went.

Well,

me and a couple of friends, we got

together one day, and we just said, you

know what? We're tired of not taking advantage

of this. Let's just leave,

you know, 20 minutes before Fedr, and let's

just start walking. And let's just see what

happens, Bismillah.

And so we that's exactly what we did.

Pitch dark, you know, 20 minutes, half an

hour before Fedr, we start walking.

And we didn't get far before

somebody pulled over on the side of the

road to pick us up. Now normally, in

Medina at that time, people would be basically,

like, taxi drivers, you know, like, everybody's a

taxi driver. So you would negotiate a fare

or whatever. But because we were going to

Fajr prayer at the prophet's Masjid,

nobody would ever ask us for any money.

They'd always take us.

And so when we told the other students

that this was happening, more and more students

started coming and

and doing this. And, yeah, there would be

people I mean, and we would get to

know some of the drivers. Sometimes they were

the same the same people. Multiple days, we

would see them and we'd, you know, strike

up conversation and things like that. So in

my entire time living there and walking to

Fejer, we started doing going to Quran halakas

after Fejer and and things like that and

benefited a lot.

I never once paid. I never once paid

for a ride to the prophet Masjid every

single time.

And it's about an hour walk, so it's

not not a small thing. Every single time,

somebody picked me up for free, and they

they brought us. May Allah reward them.