Taking a break, I think. And yeah, it's Candice this time.

I don't think I'll continue blogging for now. I don't know how long, but I don't really feel free to right now, so I will take a break. I don't know what to say, really... But I hope to be able to come back because I've had almost nothing but positive experiences through this blog. I met a bunch of great people, and I got to discover so much about myself by going about it piece by piece and reading others' views too. I'll continue to read and comment on the blogs out there.

The other side of the story...

Peace upon you. I am candice's Husband.

Lately i had some of troubles with my wife because of this blog.

We made a deal about not mentioning our personal life no pictures of her or my daughter or even me, and not mentioning anything about me or my daughter in good or in bad.

this blog was made for exploring life and islam , not "Exposing my family's LIFE" ,

Candice is a new convert, her parents doesn't know she is muslim yet, and she wont tell them untill she is ready, I dont even check her blog because i find it personal area, but sometimes things happens about her talking about the flight delaying then i saw her posting on facebook about the full story in her blog, Facebook is being visited by alot of her family members, friends, who ofc woundered where is her blog, I warned candice never ever link her blog with anything of her real life ( even facebook i am not a big fan of it ).

- So i guess when she expose our life secrets to anyone without my permition thats against our deal from the begining, Its my personal life, i dont want anyone to know about our personal life, if candice want to mention something about her personal life its her choise, she can talk about something she did for me, everyone got his privacy, so i guess that person who talked about security of me not accessing her blog... i will answer him with: She is my wife, i am trying to protect her from internet stalkers and be sure no one will hurt her, She knows all my passwords and i know hers we r married, so i guess you got what i mean? and if someone violated rules it's her not me by mentioning me and my daughter. and Candice mentions mostly the bad things, before i even see her friends or her family, they didn't like me, because she mentions only the dark side of everything, which i consider is a lie. for example "my husband didn't go out with me .... but he cleaned the apartment" so when she mentions the first part only it looks like i am a bad person.

About my Flight and the blaming part:

I missed the flight to come back to canada because the plane was leaving at 2:30 PM and i was there at the airport about 1:38 PM and they close the gates 1 hour in advance.

as candice mentioned I was blaming everyone but my self. which is not true.

she has an issue with me everything i explain something she thinks i am blaming someone

-- Because I was telling her what happened and the reasons that made me miss the flight. --

so let me explain the reasons i missed my flight:

1- Counting on my best friend that i've known for over 15 years:

He promised me he will bring to the airport the 17th and insisted on that and when i told i prefer city cap so u sleep, he was like NO WAY you are my best friend and if i dont do you this favour then we not friends,

( eventhough during the month i was there he stood me up many times, like calling me telling i will come tonight, so i cancel my planes with others and sometimes even my family members for him, and he ends up not coming, so its like wasting nights of only 30 days i am staying there, specially when its so hard in ramadan and me taking care of my daughter, and he when i call him many times he ignores my calls but i excuse him for it),

So i was actually worried about him not coming and in the same didn't want him to be upset.

So we agreed i will go to him and stay with him so we can leave early in the morning to go to my house. more like sleep over.

i went there at 4 am , and tried to convince him to come to my condo instead because i had to help my mom do the final packing and check if there is anymissing. he refused and he said just wake me up at 8 am , i woke up 7:55 and then started trying to wake him from 8:00 am to 8:45 he was like wait wait 5 more mins so i told him it's getting late i will have to go now, he said ok u do your stuff then wake me at 10 am. i kept calling him from 10am to 11 am no answers, i even called his mom to wake him up she failed. then i decided to call citycap they told me we will be there at 11:30 max .

SO its actually my fault to count on him, i didn't blame him, but i did gave him warning of treating me like shit when if he asks a favour i do it without saying no. so that was the final warning and now i broke up with him not because of the flight thing he called him later telling him what happened and being pissed that he was sleeping like a dead person, he talked to me like it's not a big deal its very simple and he is going to pay 420 $ the fees that i had to pay to replace my flight time to tuesday, and he said you will get the money today, i didn't want the money from him but the way he talked to me like he didn't do anything wrong, then not even showing up as he said i decided to not be a friend who doesn't care about anyone but himself.

2- City cap: the guy arrived 12:05 instead of 11:30 , he faced bad traffic too.

3- Traffic: normaly at night when there is no traffic it takes about 12-15 min to be at the airport from my house. but it's noon time, 2 days before the small eid (breaking the fast feast) everyone is out to buy his eid supplies / new clothes etc.. the traffic was really very slow.. we ended up being there at 1:38 pm so it took us about 1hour 35 min to arrive ( its cairo airport and i live downtown) even talking less traffic roads didn't work to save time.

so I can't blame it on traffic because i know it was going to be really bad. but from 12

4- Egyptair has a new policy of closing the luggage gates 1h in advance.

So they officialy closed it 1:30 pm and the officer on the security gate of the airport he told me no way to get to the flight now. i went breserek on him threatining him if he doesn't let me i will get him in a big trouble ( got some connections :P in egypt ) but it didn't work at all.... he told me he can't help me , I had to do that just because i know how candice will react and how bad she is waiting nora's return. i was so damn nervious i even yelled at the manager of the whole airport to let me in. he offered to talk to my wife to explain what happened.

and actually the flight left 3 PM ughhh.. stupid airport rules.

well can't blame the egyptair too not their fault mine of being ignorant of new rules.

5- thinking egyptair is a lazy airways:

when i was going to egypt the scheduled flight was 9pm , we left 11pm ... 2H later.. and they always do that but they r cheap in prices compared to other airways.

and thats my totally fault.

So after all i didn't blame anyone more than he should be blamed.

and finally "a great thanks" goes to the person who called me IDIOT without even knowing me and what happened exactly, and i would like to advice her not to talk behind someone's back because thats considered "Namima",

I would like to thank everyone who read this and understood and i hope candice respect my wishes of not talking about me without asking me.

God bless you all.

Candice's husband: Ahmed Ibrahim

She arrived!

It was the most perfect reuion! Can't type much because I'm at work. I might later replace this post by something more detailed but I needed to announce it! I'm so happy! :D

Eid Mubarak! And books.

I wish you all a Blessed Eid :)

I decided to do some book shopping today. I ordered from www.goodwordbooks.com, finally. About 50$ worth of books. Lots of those small books that I figure would be good for my uncle to learn some basics about Islam, and some slightly larger books for reference. I also got some children's books including "My First Qur'an"! They didn't ask me for my credit card info yet, but I got an e-mail about the order and I figure they will send me something else including the shipping charges before they bill me... I hope it won't be too insane because I know it's shipping from India which is pretty far... So as long as it's not a mega-amount, that should be good to go, and arriving in like a month! lol.

I also filled my shopping cart with books on amazon.ca, which included Muhammad Asad's Message of the Qur'an with commentary. It's an expensive one, but I feel it's worth getting... Also Tariq Ramadan's Radical Reform and In the Footsteps of the Prophet. And a book on sign language.

AND, I was looking for The Ideal Muslimah, which I've been meaning to read, and didn't want to order it from another different place, so knowing it was online, I downloaded it, from kalamullah.com. Wow, they have an insane amount of books on there. May Allah reward them for posting up so much information. There were so many that interested me, but I know I won't go back there all the time to see, so I spent such a long time downloading pretty much everything for my computer. I feel I have easy access to so much information now!

I love to feel a book though when I'm reading, so I don't know what the solution will be for these... Maybe I'll get used to reading on the laptop. Or I'll print some little by little. I'll see.

OH, last thing. Only 2 dodos until my Noonie is with me!!! I know I've said that before, but this time it should be for real! :)

My husband didn't like my two previous posts so he deleted them... I feel like my blog is missing something because I really did have something to say when I wrote them.

But anyway... I can just wrote the major thing in a very plain couple of sentence that cannot risk offending him.

Nora didn't come back from Egypt on Thursday like was planned. She will be back Tuesday (the 22nd).

My Nora is coming home in 3 dodos!

I can't wait! Thursday night, my daughter Nora and my husband are coming home from Egypt after 5 full weeks!!!! I can't believe it has been so long. Although I can hardly remember what it feels like to have them here, so in that way, it does feel like it has been forever.

It has kinda sucked being alone all this time. Yes, lots of time to focus on myself, bla bla bla, but I focused on them even while they were away and I didn't do anything special while they were gone really. I took the extra time to sleep more and relax. I took up Farm Town (Facebook ap) and became obsessed. My farm is looking great though! And I read more than I could have with them here.

I don't care though. I'll let everything on my farm rot to see my beautiful daughter and have her in my arms! To take care of her like she needs. To discipline her after 5 weeks without (poor babe, but vacation is over...).

3 dodos (sleeps)!!! Woohoo!

Shopping in Egypt (with pics) P.3

This is the first one he took that really got my attention. My husband was trying to show me the white one... It's OK. But too tight around the butt and I want something that flows away and hides it. I really loved the shape of the purpley one and wanted him to get it for me! But as you saw earlier, it's as purple as Barney!!

Other one that caught my attention was the brown and beige one. Seems to flow pretty well and it would match with different colours. Looks different in the other pic though so I wonder...

And the one totally to the left that we only see a sliver of. Just that sliver really caught my attention. You can see how gorgeous it is in a previous pic.

Other comment I have: Seriously, this fashion with the tight tops is terrible!!! The one with the white skirt has a white long sleave top, can you even believe it's there?! And the blue and pink one! It's like the Egyptian version of a person who show's 4 inches of boob crack here!

Shopping in Egypt (with pics) P.2

He still wan't really getting my style when he considered this one.

This is supposed to be brown, he says... Very shiney and weird... He insisted on getting it. Says it's really nice. A bit worried because I don't have the same taste he does... But we'll see! I'll make it work!

Plain and black. We actually do have this style here in Canada.

This is the one you will see in the pic in P.3. I found it by accident becaue it appeared a tiny bit in that picture and I love it! He got it for me :D When I told him I wanted solid colours, he didn't think to consider ones like this. But the shape of it is perfect and it has so many colours it would probably match with a few things.

The 4 he was going to get. The purple one is the same one you will see near the middle of the picture in P.3. I don't like it afterall. It's too much purple.

Next part coming up!

Shopping in Egypt (with pics) P.1

My lovely lovely husband went shopping in Egypt today to get me some long skirts! :D He basically took pictures with his phone and then sent them to me by e-mail and called me to know what I thought. Here are the pictures (unfortunately not in the right order):

Bunch of skirts. We had already picked out a couple by then and they didn't seem my style when I looked at them. Very colourful though!

I'd asked for tunics and he didn't get that I wanted something long enough to cover my bum. This just wasn't what I was looking for.

I like this one and he got it for me. He actually picked it out himself which was impressive!

At the beginning of his shopping trip, he remembered that I'd said I wanted an "eid outfit" and even if I had explained that it was an abaya with matching shayla that I wanted for this eid outfit, he got confused and started showing me long skirts with matching tops. Totally not my style!! I think you have to be in your 30s at least for this outfit! (skirt is pretty nice though)

Near the beginning of his shopping experience, I had to tell him I was not looking for matchy suitish outfits and that I wanted something more plain like solid colours. He came up with this... Not bad, but not me.

Next post coming up!

Went out in hijab

I needed milk so I decided to go out and get it in hijab! It's a short walk. Out of the apartment building by the back, through 2 parking lots (our's and the other building behind us) and across the boulevard! I was only really noticed by one person, the employee there. He definitely recognized me since I go there weekly maybe and seemed to wonder about the hijab since I normally don't wear it. But I have been there in an abaya so he might figure if he's at all the type of person who observes and wonders... He could even start factoring in the fact that my daughter is a bit darker than me and make up all sorts of reasons for me being in hijab. lol

Anyway, not much of an experience but I wanted to share it still! :)

Not revealing sins...

I haven't been posting much since Ramadan started... At least not about Ramadan. I'm kind of avoiding the subject but I want to be honest with my readers as well... I won't go into any detail though... There's something about being all alone for Ramadan... I'm not being as strong as I should be during this time and I'm not working on becoming a better Muslim like I thought I would and like I know I should.

I don't feel I should be posting negativity though. To be honest, there was one blog entry I read - I don't know where at all- that was not written with bad intentions, on the contrary, they could have been good, but the post still brought me down a little. I don't want to be the person who brings down anyone with going into detail about my Ramadan.

I will post about it when I feel there is a positive conclusion a person could draw strength from. Until the situation becomes something that could be of benefit to someone, I will not post any details about it. This is what I take from covering your sins in Islam. I don't think it means that you can't talk about a sin you've committed if you're writing about it in a way that inspires others, consoles others, etc., When the benefit is greater than the potential harm, it can be nothing other than OK. It's not only not OK "brag" about a sin you've committed (something that is obviously completely wrong), of coruse, but I also think that to display them when there is no reason, even if you know you have done wrong, and the people you are talking to know you know that, is not OK. There needs to be some (potential) benefit to someone.

Example: Person is talking to another and just says, "I now pray 5x a day. I used to not do the prayers at all except for going to Jumah but I now find it important to pray all of my obligatory salat."

There is nothing too too bad about this statement. Obviously the person knows they were doing wrong. But if that's all they're saying, why say it at all? Is there any benefit to anyone in this simple statement? I don't think there is. They are not stressing how important they find it is and how they regret not doing it (which could encourage the listener to change his or her ways NOW instead of later). They are just telling the person of a previous sin in a way that could seem very innocent, and could even be very innocent, but could also lead a person to sin themselves. If they are struggling with their prayers, they could find the wrong kind of inspiration in a simple statement like this. They could feel that they too, with time, will become the practicing Muslims they want to be, like this person who changed her ways, and might not make the steps to just do it now because it seemed so easy and gradual for this person.

All that to say that I will be more careful about posting things, and that the reason I am not going over my Ramadan experience with you all is that... I want to benefit people if I can... And so I'll try to post, but about things I feel can be of benefit, or at least of no harm.

youtube pervs

I made a video 2 weeks ago just for fun of me showing my scarves on cam. I was going to post it here but didn't do it. It has been on youtube for those 2 weeks though. I didn't think about it until now when I asked my husband if he saw it. He had lost the link so I searched for my video on youtube and found that it had been added to a playlist. I was like: "Wow, someone actually watched it without me linking to it??! Why would someone do that?". Well, I got my answer: it's a pervert with a fetish for veiled women! ALL his videos are of people covering their face! Most are not Muslimahs but I saw Pixie there (from Ilovehishma) too!

EWWWWWWW!!!

I think he probably watched it and got what he wanted out of it and is done with it. He has over 200 favourites like this... But it's just seriouly ewwy. And I want to remove it now. And I will. It is a useless video and even if he doesn't see *me*, it is me under there. If it was a video with substance I'd probably leave it there (more benefit than harm) but there is nothing to this video. If I post in the future, I will make sure it's not just out of fun and that I actually have something to share.

BTW: I was wearing niqab in the vid!

AND I just realized that I got 350 views in those 2 weeks!!! That is not normal for a boring "showing my scarves" video! My title has nothing to do with niqab, but I just noticed that in my description box, I mention that I don't wear niqab full time, or the hijab. So I must have gotten views from those two popular search terms... It was so not intentional. I didn't use them in my tags for that reason (popular search terms) but I guess it doesn't really matter.

I love my posters from simplyislam.com!

There was a promotion on simplyislam.com that if you linked to them on your blog, you could get 5 free posters. Well, I figured, why not, they seem to have great products even if I haven't gotten anything from there yet. So I put the links in my side bar thing on blogger and ended up posting about the iPalm Qur'an later as well (because I wanted to remove the links on the side and felt it would be unfair to have had them there for just a couple weeks). Anyway, I wanted to update that I got the posters. They were just as described and seriously arrived fast after the links were posted!

And I love them! I'm so glad I chose the ones I chose! I have one with more babyish colours that will go great in Nora's room and 4 in more reddish, orangey beigey colours that will be good with beige walls of the kitchen. I'll put those in a sort of rectangle together.

I'd left them to be pressed down because they were all rolled up like posters are, and so I just decided to give them a look now; I'd kinda forgotten about them on the table there for the past 2 weeks or so. And I read them. And I LOVE the verses that are on them. I just feel good that I will soon have them displayed! My first Islamic art decoration thing!

Here is the link if you want to get your 5 free posters because it's still open.
http://simplyislam.com/promotions/postersforbloggers/Islamic-posters-for-links.asp

I got the 3rd, 4th and 5th ones you see on that page as well as the other orangey one below and the last one "Mercy" that will go in my daughter's room.

Conversation with my aunt

Note: My family doesn't know I'm Muslim. They just know my husband is.

It's funny that I commented on Kimdonesia's blog post today about her having someone tell her to read the book "Not Without My Daughter" because I had to add my own similar story. My aunt, this same aunt, is the one who told me to read the book when she found out I was chatting a lot with (and getting serious about) my now-husband. I actually read it and then explained to her how low the risk was of me getting kidnapped if I went to Egypt to meet him (which I was planning on at the time) and how cultural this all was -- not religious. I think she ended up learning something. She was just worried about me and ignorant about Islam. It's out of caring...

I saw her just this evening and it came up that it was the month of Ramadan and she and my dad obviously had very negative feelings about it. My dad made a comment about how Islam doesn't move with the times and my aunt made a comment about how extreme it was to not eat. I felt the need, obviously, to put in my thoughts.

So I started by addressing my dad's comment. I wanted to keep it a light but informative conversation. I didn't want to go into it about "things changing" in religion. That's too much of a big topic. I just casually said there was nothing to change about the tradition of fasting. They weren't going to make it half-days just for fun, they weren't going to decide to eliminate it just for fun. It was part of Islam and would continue to be. There was no "ruler of Islam" that would make the decision that fasting wasn't part of the religion because there was no "ruler of Islam".

My aunt was surprised. She said that yes there was. I said that no, there were just people educated in Islam that people went to for advice, but that it was not one person. The reason it felt like it was one person was because of how much they all agree on what is the truth in Islam. There is so little disagreement on so many things, especially big ones like fasting Ramadan, which is pretty much unanimous, that people who didn't know would think it's only because one person was responsable for the rulings.

I also felt the need to explain Ramadan and what it means to Muslims. I told her how much Muslims love this month. For them, it's like the holidays for us. It's a month where people are just happy and celebrate, where people try to be more giving. It's not a time when they feel they are forced to fast and suffer in hunger and thirst. I explained that first, they do it for God. But that the reason for that is to feel how it is for people who are less fortunate. I went on with a personal story of when I fasted (this was my first day, but I left it general and said I'd fasted one day before) and told her how yes, I was hungry and a bit weaker, but that it helped us be able to control ourselves and our desires. It made us realize how much time we have in a day and how much we can do. And about feeling what the less fortunate feel, it was a small taste of what they might go through, and that it was only after you broke the fast that you could really realize how blessed you are to have a delicious meal ready in front of you to break that fast. I told her that from my personal experience, it really was something worth going through.

I went on with the last big part of Ramadan, which is the renewal of a person's faith. I told her that Ramadan is a time when Muslims try to be better. During the year, they might have gone down, stayed stable in their faith, but that this was a time to do more and "revitalize" your faith. It was a reminder every year to try harder and be better.

She seemed to have accepted my answer and actually think about what I said.

But she told me what bothered her. She felt that Muslims were too forced to do things and that there were too many rules (or something to that effect). She talked about her mom (my grand-mother) who she says was a devout Catholic, but who never pushed her kids into the religion. They got baptized and they went to Church, but once they got older and stopped wanting to go, it was fine. When they got boyfriends or went out, it was fine too. I said it was great she'd given them that freedom, but that if my grand-ma really thought that Catholicism was the truth from God and that it needed to be followed, she would have pushed more for them to do it probably. If she thought for example that they'd get a punishment like Hell for not being good Christians, she'd have made sure they were, from caring about them and wanting the best for them. It might have been more cultural for her, as much as she believed it.

When I was talking, I didn't think about how my grand-mother probably thought they were "safe" since they were baptized and Jesus died for their sins. I just don't know much about this stuff so it didn't really spring to mind.

I hope she's closer to understanding Islam. Just like I saw Catholisicm in the way I saw Islam when I talked to her (forgetting the baptism and dying for sins parts) she sees Islam like Catholicism was for us decades ago in how it rules every aspect of a person's life. But I'm sure it was a step in the right direction in her understanding!