RaNdOm thoughts

I have been busy with kids and tahfeez school for weeks so I have not been able to write in my blog. I am done with exams now and the kids started their summer break so I can steal a few minutes here and there to write. I wish the summer can be spent relaxing and having lots of fun and traveling to see our family members, but its not going to be that way. My kids go to the Government schools which uses the Arabic curriculum and arabic as a medium of teaching every subject. We are from an English speaking country so I have to homeschool my children in English language especially during the summer so that they can cope in a regular English speaking school if and when we return home. This would not have been an issue if we were certain we would be here as long as we want, but KSA does not usually grant citizenship to expats no matter how long  ere but their status is like that of any other person born anywhere else. They don't have any special privilege as a result of being born here. If may Allah forbid, we become jobless, we all have to leave. So, teaching them in English using the American curriculum becomes imperative so that we have a back up plan in case of the unexpected. It will be nice staying here forever but there is really no true Hijrah to KSA since You cant determine how long you remain there and everything at the end is in Allah's hands.

 What I wrote in my last post about a man remarrying soon after his wife passes away was in no way meant to criticize the man in question. I can't even imagine what he must be going through. He is all alone now and the kids are still in their country because he cant care for them properly on his own and he has to go to work so they will have to be left alone at home for many hours in a day which is not a good thing. 

  The only thing I personally felt even though it should not be any of my business is that it was a little too soon. But hey I cant even blame my late friends hb since it was her own mum that offered her sister to him in marriage. The mum might have reasoned he would end up marrying some woman one day sooner or later anyways so why not tell him to marry her daughter so that she would not lose him as a son-in-law  and risk her grandkids being maltreated by a total stranger that he is likely to marry. I guess the way women think is completely different from the way men think. Thankful slave mentioned that it usually happens the other way round as well. Yes. I have seen it before even in my own culture. In fact this is more common than the husband marrying his late wife's sister and it is seen as acceptable. But I notice a woman usually feels reluctant to remarry after her husband dies and if they do, it takes a longer time before they can really make themselves do it. The sister Thankful slave mentioned that married her B-I-L after her hb passed away most likely did not marry him the day after her iddah ended right? even though that would have been halal.One of our friends was not at all surprised when she heard our late friends hb was remarrying. She said she had a neighbour back home who married his late wife's sister a week after she passed away. Meanwhile a friend of mine whom I wrote about on this same blog who lost her husband january last year still puts me off each time I pray for her that she would be blessed by another husband who will help her to raise her young kids. She tells me she does not need a husband; she needs to give her all to her kids. Of course I think she may eventually change her mind one day and decide to remarry, but hmmmm...what I have concluded in my little mind is..................................................................

Men, no matter what they think or how macho they think they are and see themselves as being superior to woman, Despite the fact that  many do not respect women or even realize how important women are, are more in need of women than they will ever be able to accept and affirm, women also need men but men need women more than women need men. I have heard many women say they will not remarry if their husband dies before them whereas men are in fact fantasizing having another woman or other women even when their wife is beside them. I know most people will not agree with this but these are my RaNdOm thoughts for today.

 

The line between life and death is thin...

So I have had a lot of random thoughts in my head after I heard about the death of Tahera. Firstly, Tahera is (I somehow can't bring myself to type was) a pious muslimah who I met around 2 years ago  in the afternoon quran school for women and children. She was new in town because her family had just moved here from Pakistan few months before that time. She was in the process of enrolling her kids in the American school here because her children could not speak arabic. Few months later, we met at the shopping mall and I asked her about her children's school, how they are coping in the American school, to my surprise, she told me she has pulled her kids out of the school because it does not meet the moral standards she wanted for her kids. She later took them to the Pakistani school only to pull them out after some months again for the same reasons as the american school. To solve the problem, Tahera brought the kids with her to the tafeez school I go in the morning after I stopped the afternoon classes at which we met. Most of her friends questioned her about her decision to pull  her kids out of school and take them with her to a quran school, but she calmly explained that that was her best option for now. She sends the kids, a 6th grader and a 3rd grader to her friend who does home tutoring as a business in the afternoon to be able to keep up with what they ought to learn in a regular school. This, to me, shows a level of piety not commonly found among people in this age where most of us will compromise a little deen and morality here and there for our kids to be able to get a good education. I also remember one day Tahera and another sister were having a discussion and the sister was recommending a particular TV station programme and she (Tahera) replied that her children do not watch TV because they don't have one in their home because of the ills of TV. The other sister who happens to be an Arab was shocked to even hear that there is anyone who does not have a TV set. These are some of what I can remember about Tahera. She also wears full hijab with hand gloves which is not common here. Most people wear the niqab but don't cover their hands. So when I heard that she died on the spot when the accident happened, I was really humbled and at the same time mortified about the worthlessness of the life of this world. Within a few seconds, someone's situation may change such that they would be so helpless about issues they would have thought inappropriate under normal circumstances. I mean In saudi Arabia men and women don't mix or talk. So men deal with men and women deal with women. I was just sitting here wondering how Tahera's husband must have felt when some accident emergency officials were taking his wife's lifeless body away from the accident spot and he just could not do a thing about it. Men who would not even have been able to exchange salaams with her few minutes before the accident. I am not a man but I think that must be a really hard pill to swallow for any muslim man. He and the kids were taken in a car to the nearest hospital while his wife was taken in another by men he did not know to a destination he does not know in makkah and he was unable to stop them. I really can't imagine how that must have felt. He later told friends who went to meet him at the hospital that his wife did not want to come back home after the umrah in makkah. She said she wanted to remain there. But they had to come back so that he could resume work on saturday. Even while at makkah, she did not want to return to the hotel they were staying. She insisted on sitting at the haram all night. Maa sha Allah that was somehow comforting for all of us. she spent her last hours in worship and remembrance of Allah. She had it in her will to be buried in makkah among the faithfuls. She was buried there yesterday after a janazah prayer at the haram after salaatul isha' maa sha Allah. May Allah forgive Tahera and all dead muslims.

The school predicament for expatriates living in saudi

I want to write about an issue that affects most foreigners living in Saudi Arabia; The decision on which school to place their kids. The language of communication in Saudi Arabia like most countries in the middle east is arabic, so this is the medium of teaching in saudi schools up till high school level, and in some cases, even to university level. However, a high percentage of foreigners who are not from gulf countries speak english and would rather their kids learn in english. The international private schools teach in english but usually, either they charge exhorbitant fees or they are substandard, or worse, they are run based on the culture and ettiquettes of the country that establish the schools.

In my case, for instance, I want my kids to learn english and arabic and be fluent in both. If I place them in saudi school, then, I have to teach them english myself or find someone to pay to do the job. Otherwise, they would not be able to school in my country, should we decide to return home. On the other hand, if I place them in the international school, they would be lacking in arabic and worse is the fear they may imbibe the un islamic culture of the school, and I need to work very hard to raise them as pious muslim children, and would have to explain to them why they can't do certain things they would be made to do in the school for example, music.

This is a difficult position in which I think I can't win. No one seems to understand. Either someone is telling us to just send them to the saudi school and teach them english, which is easier said than done with 4 boys, or others telling us to send them to the international school and exert the extra effort to guide them to be upright with the help of Allah.

I really pray Allah makes out a way out of this predicament and guide us to what is best for them in this world and the next.