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In the Name of God بسم الله
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Arbaeen 2017

yasahebalzaman.313

Entry posted by yasahebalzaman.313

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:salam:

As some of you know I'm a christian who converted and still living in a christian household practicing my religion in secrecy. Before i discovered islam and before i committed I used to camp in nature and i have this photography hobby. This year i decided to tell my parents i'm going camping in the nature in our country for 6 days and in this way i managed to travel to iraq.

We went me and my friend alone, we had people there in iraq who were having us as guests. The moment we went to the airport the struggling begun, we missed our plane which was in the morning, we waited the whole day for available seats but it was way too crowded. On that day, the last plane had 4 overbooked seats, basically they sold them seats which didn't exist, so Alhamdulillah they fixed us with them, we went from Lebanon to Turkey and from turkey to Najaf, we arrived to najaf at 3 am in the morning without sleep. This was on wednesday and the arbaeen is on friday.

We took a cab to visit imam ali, there was a point where the taxi couldn't go further, so he dropped us and i literally started running with my bag i couldn't believe i'm miles away of My Imam. When i reached it was so overwhelming, WHAT A MYSTERY HE IS! I felt powerful that he is my leader i felt like he's right there looking at me i literally felt his presence i felt the utmost sympathy which was coming from him it felt as if i'm visiting my guardian, my protector. It was very strange and pleasant.

We couldn't stay more, so we went to the house where we were staying at, we ate and we started walking from imam ali's makam to the first pole. I reached the first pole and started feeling the weakness of my body. It is worth to mention here that I'm athletic, I run since almost 4 years everyday and i do some very intense workouts (interval training, lactic acid training, fartlek training, etc). But walking is nothing like running.

First of all No one told me how much it was hard to finish the 100km walk. No one told me i should get some doaa to listen to quran perhaps or latmiyat or whatever else, and all people told me it's very nice it's fun you feel the spirituality, etc... So i went there having this mentality, i wasn't mentally prepared for it. I hit the 200 pole and i seriously started questioning if i can continue or not. I called friends who reached to 950 pole and they started insisting on me that i should take a taxi and go to them. This was at maghreb prayer after 6 hours walking. After they called me several times telling me to come i started thinking if this was my case then what was the case of sayeda zeinab or roukaya or soukayna and the whole household of ahlulbayt?! The thought of me not being able to finish it ached my heart and it made me cry. I rested, my friend told me that she will carry my bag to help me and with the grace of God i started walking. With all the psychological and physical pain, suffering, sleeplessness, shivering (due to the hectic situation), swallowed feet, empty stomach, burning feet, cramps, i reached at 12.30 am to 634 pole. The thing that didn't help was the pace of my friend she was always 10-20 meters ahead of me, so there was no talking or conversations to help me forget about the pain. But she really helped by carrying my bag. So we slept at 1.30 am till 3.30 am the noise and all the snoring didn't help much. We prayed i slept 2 hours after that then continued to walk. The second day i was falling asleep when i was walking, i started having the flu with the fever and when i rested for few minutes I'd fall asleep on the chair. Nevertheless, We continued and we finished with couple of km left which i finished the second day because there were a big number of crowd, more than any other year and i didn't have the energy anymore to withstand all this crowd and walk among them.

We reached the shrines of imam hussein and aba l fadel on saturday in the afternoon, we waited for couple of hours but it was all worth it, you can't exactly feel a lot of spirituality because you can't sit and focus your thoughts and get your head together. Everything was so quick. And if you want to sit for example pray talk to the imam someone comes and hits you.

Of course there is special energy at every makam, you feel something different, for example when i reached the shrine of imam hussein i couldn't believe that i'm standing in front of the one and only man who's earth and skies are created due to his sacrifice. That we exist due to his sacrifice, everything we are everything we have is from Ashura.

The rest of the trip took it's flow, other things happened but alhamulillah we managed everything in the end.

"الأجر على قدر المشقة" It means you get rewarded as much as you tolerate pain and hardships.

When i came back home, I accidentally forgot my ticket in the bag so when mom was removing the clothes to wash them she saw the ticket of course she snapped but she didn't tell my father or else he would have kicked me out of the house, it is the one and only time she didn't mention anything, because before that when she sensed that i was fasting or doing things related to religion she told my dad right away, but this time she couldn't. Everyone of us is protected by the imam of our time, he handles our matters all the time.

I hope this was an inspiration to the readers and i hope everyone will experience this zyara, because after my personal experience i realized that the walk part is very essential for our Akida (creed), it is a kind of training.

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yasahebalzaman.313

yasahebalzaman.313 747

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Since it is not good to strain yourself It is worth to mention that to be able to finish the walk in an organized way you should put a strategic plan, and that's how i think it should be:

Every 100 pole you should rest 10-15mins, start walking from fajr prayer till zuhr prayer by then you should have the time to finish 400 pole which is equal to 20km. Rest 1 hour, you can sleep or eat or do whatever you want, then get up again and start walking till maghreb prayer, you can continue after that and walk at night it depends on the weather and the available facilities. It looks like since each year the number of visitors is increasing they are providing the same services which you find during the day.

In this way you will finish 600-700 poles the first day and the second day as well and you will feel the spirituality you need to feel along the way. Take latmiyat, quran and doaa to listen to.

N.B.: The walk should start from the shrine of Imam Ali to the shrine of aba l Fadel till you reach imam Hussein, Not from the first pole. The distance from the shrine of imam ali till the first pole is around 6.5 km.

  • Advanced Member
Ali_

Ali_ 145

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هنيآ لكم وعقبالنا....

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yasahebalzaman.313

yasahebalzaman.313 747

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On 12/21/2017 at 8:17 PM, Ali_ said:

هنيآ لكم وعقبالنا....

شكرا

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Intellectual Resistance

Intellectual Resistance 1,196

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الحمد لله

هذا كلام جميل جدا

Beautiful brother, may Allah reward you for sharing this with us, and guide many others to the way of Muhammed and his purified progeny if he so wills.

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yasahebalzaman.313

yasahebalzaman.313 747

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On 12/31/2017 at 7:37 PM, Intellectual Resistance said:

الحمد لله

هذا كلام جميل جدا

Beautiful brother, may Allah reward you for sharing this with us, and guide many others to the way of Muhammed and his purified progeny if he so wills.

Thank you :) And im a sister, People get confused cause of my nickname.

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