Paris Update 2

Bonjour!

Still living it up here in Paris, folks. Even though it's nearly 2:30am and I'm working, but that's just the way it goes. Paris has its price.

So my meetings earlier today were quite brutal. Not the presenation itself, though they did make me present as the last speaker, but my tiredness factor. Since I didn't fall asleep until 3:30am the night before, I ended up with only 1.5 hours of sleep. I woke up for sahoor around 5am and thought I'd go back to bed after Fajr, but I had to take care of business again. By the time I was done, I had to get ready for the meeting. So by the second presentation this morning, I had engaged myself in a long, tough battle of keeping my eyes open. It wasn't pretty. Thankfully during lunch, though, I got in a power nap for about 40 minutes, so that later energized me.

After the meeting, I came back to my room and emailed some people (work and personal), then finally went out for further adventures. This time I hit up the Grand Palais; a former palace now museum that boasts an eye-capturing raised window roof. It looked like it could be giant greenhouse or a stadium of sorts. Across the street from it you had another nice palace. Further down, you had the musuem (Les Invalides) that holds the tomb and body of Napoleon. No, not Napoleon Dynamite, though some of you may actually like that sort of thing. Unfortunately, Les Invalides was closed by the time I got there. In between Les Invalides and Grand Palais you have Paris' famous river -- the Siene and its classic-looking bridges that connect both sides. I took plenty of pics and video highlights, so hopefully I'll have something up soon. Oh, I did also see the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame from a distance. Both looked really cool.

I must say, the more I see of Paris, the more I fall in love with the city. It's quite hypnotic and very romantic. I know I've said that before, but that really is the best way to describe it. No wonder Zareen told me to tell girls that I'm in Paris. "Every girl likes Paris." And why wouldn't they? If I'm acting this gay about it, imagine a chick. (Haha...so un-sexist of me to say that, huh?)

After all that, I went back to the Grand Mosque to try and catch iftari there. I had just missed the jammat by the time I got there and all the brothers were rushing out. I was wondering what was going on until I realized that they were all lining up for iftari. Gratis (=free) food. Can't beat it. After praying maghrib and taking some pics of the courtyard, I stood at the end of the line. The way they work the food serving was like the military! You had brothers that monitored who came into the kitchen area, but it was because they had set-up all the plates. Each table had it's plate for the individual brother, accompanied with an orange and, go figure, bread. In the middle, you had a few bowls of the same dish -- salaan with shorba and chick peas. But it had a twist to it. There were also spaghetti noodles in there. Never saw that before. The food was fine, but felt good because we were all breaking our fast together and eating from the same dish, so inshaAllah we had the mad baraqa points coming our way.

I did meet someone there, too. A very, very awesome brother named Younes (i.e. Younus). Younes is young and Algerian; he's in France to complete his PhD in archaeology, which I totally give him props for. His English was pretty good and he was mashaAllah the nicest guy. We talked about "typical" things (i.e. life in the USA, what we do, etc.), but we also talked about how Islam is a religion of compassion and brotherhood. Younes was no exception to this and was in fact an excellent exemplar for these Islamic principles. He made sure that I was the first for everything between us. First one to enter the kitchen area. First one to get the food. When I tried reciprocating the brotherhood by offering him from a plate of sweets, he purposely took the smallest one. And before someone says it, it wasn't because he saw me and was like, "Dang, I better let this guy eat before me otherwise he'll eat me alive." Haha. I saw it coming, Ali & Umar!!

Before leaving, he gave me his email address as well as phone number and told me that whenever I come back to Paris to reach him and that he'd be more than happy to help me out with anything. SubhanAllah. Such brotherhood; it was like we were actual blood brothers or cousins. The feeling is quite special, I have to say. I know that sounds stupid, but that's the best way I can put it. Alhamdullilah for this deen.

Oh, before I sign off here, the one thing that really saddened me to see were a handful of sisters outside of the masjid (some quite young) who were asking for money. That hurt to see that. May Allah make things easy for them. Allah huma salay Allah Muhammad. Ameen!

Okay, room service is at the door...

Laterz!