Karl Marx

Guess what Karl Marx's last words were before dying?

"Go on, Get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough."

Sister of Mine

This sister of mine is called Aida. She is very bright, when she was only 12 years old she wrote these two poems for me. The second poem was inspired by the family trip we took from America to Bosnian and Croatia in the summer of 2001. I treasure them very much and have put them in my book of quotes.

My Sister

My sister sometimes she's cold blooded, sometimes she is mean, but by all means she's scary too. She talks on the phone with Meg and Sue from 4 to 5 everyday. She drives me crazy all the time. Whoe wore what and why to school? Who cares I say. She makes me want to climb up the wall, but despite all I wouldn't trade her for the world.

Croatia

Last year I went to Croatia. Me and my 2 sisters crammed in the back of my grandpa's Golf, listening to old Britany Spears. We drove by the mountain side, we drove by the sea. Till I finally thought I was going to be sick. From time to time I would look at my sister, and I saw the look in her blue eyes. It looked like she was seeking something in the sea, like a memory that was lost forever. I turned around and thought teenagers.

I would say that is very damn good for a little twelve year old. Sometimes I wonder whether she knows how much I love her.

Egypt

After graduating from college, I decided to go on a long vacation. My vacation was originally planned to be two months. However, due to circumstances I had to cut it short and ended up spending three weeks with my than time boyfriend visiting him in his home country, Egypt. And then another week in Munich visiting my aunt after 10 years and seeing meeting my uncle for the first time. Since she had married three years earlier. Egypt left an impressing feeling in me. I had an amazing good time and I saw so many things. I was on my first vacation since I had started college on top of that I was visiting my boyfriend. I had always lived at home and did not know fully, freedom. And it was freedom, complete freedom that I got on that trip. We did everything and anything that we wanted to do at any time of the day at night. It was a vacation in which we had breakfast at 2 pm and went to bed at 7 am, when others say good morning to each other we said good night. In those rare occasions when we did go to bed early, at maybe 12 am, we could hear kids outside screaming, running and playing. As I lay next to Alaa and listened to those kids playing I felt so completely at peace and I felt a great happiness. Maybe because those noises outside from the kids reminded me in a way of my childhood in my own country, when us kids in the whole neighborhood would come together and play late at night, the game hide and seek, but we didn't play it inside, instead the neighborhood kids played hide and seek and there were no boundaries, you could hide three or four blocks away. Even to this day in my country kids play outside always, even late at night and they have a childish innocence and freedom that kids in America don't have. So maybe that is why I felt so at peace and I slept so good those nights. Now when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep because it's as if someone woke me up to ask me about my life, my goals and accomplishments, during such nights when I try to force myself to go to sleep and try to block negative thoughts, I close my eyes and deeply try to imagine those nights (try to relive those nights in my imagination) when I laid next to Alaa in our apartment at the outskirts of Cairo, listening to those kids playing outside. And sometimes

that does work and I fall back to sleep.

The Road to Mecca

I am at the moment reading this book titled "The Road to Mecca" by Muhammad Asad. It is an autobiography of a European Jew who in the 1920's travelled to Palestine and after some time was intrigued with the Arab character and the Muslim way of life that he stayed started travelling in Saudi Arabia and eventually converted to Islam. It is an amazing book, it is not written like other autobiographies, from the beginning of ones life to the end in every detail. Instead, it is almost as if fictional he starts with his adventures in the desert, or his friendship with the Saudi King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud and he describes his early life in bits here in there almost like some flashbacks. It is very wonderfully written. Usually, I find autobiographies to be extremely boring and dull but to my amazement this book I cannot pick down.
Eventually, Muhammad Asad learns Arabic and translates the Quran in English, of which I also have a version. This is an excerpt of the book that touched me this morning as I read before breakfast. They are the words of an religious Arab who is answering young Asad's (when Asad was twenty two and not yet a believer of Islam) question of why Muslim's repeatedly bow and kneel in prostration during prayer.

"How else should we worship God? Did he not create both, soul and body together? And this being so, should man not pray with his body as well as with his soul? Listen, I will tell you why we Muslim pray as wel pray. We turn toward the Kaaba, God's holy temple in Mecca, knowing that the faces of all Muslims, wherever they may be, are turning to it in prayer, and that we are like one body, with Him as the centre of our thoughts. First we stand upright and recite from the Holy Koran, remembering that it is His word, given to man that he may be upright and steadfast in life. Then we say, "God is the Greatest,"reminding ourselves that no one deserves to be worshipped but Him; and bow down deep because we honour Him above all, and praise His power and glory. Thereafter we prostrate ourselves on our foreheads because we feel that we are but dust and nothingness before Him, and that He is our Creator and Sustainer on high. Then we lift our faces from the ground and remain sitting, praying that He forgive us our sins and bestow His grace upon us, and guide us aright, and give us health and sustenance. Then we again prostate ourselves on the ground and touch the dust with our foreheads before the might and glory of the One. After that, we remain sitting and pray that He bless the Prophet Muhammad who brought his message to us just as he blessed the earlier prophets; and that He bless us as well and all those who follow the right guidance; and we ask Him to give us of the good of this world and of the good of the world to come. In the end we turn our heads to the right and to the left, saying, "Peace and the Grace of God be upon you" - and thus greet all whoe are righteous, wherever they may be. 'It was thus that our Prophet used to pray and taught his followers to pray for all times, so that they might willingly surrender themselves to God - which is what Islam means - and so be at peace with Him and with their own destiny.'

Untitled- Inspirational

"I managed to save many children's lives, but sometimes I just couldn't. The sorrow and regret stay with you forever. The impotence felt at the time motivates me to act against racism, the exploitation of human beings and the frequent indolence of those who accept things as they are." Aleida Guevara