Tom Facchine – Medina Story – Walking to The Prophets Masjid
AI: Summary ©
The speaker describes their experience living off campus during their time in cities like cities like cities like Afghanistan and Nigeria. They explain that they were required to take night classes at the Arabic Institute during the time they were living off campus, which was challenging and difficult to deal with. They also discuss their experience going to the prophet's receipt for a prayer class and how they were rewarded for being a taxi driver.
AI: Summary ©
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.