بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum
Dear Friends
I pray that you are well.
It was 9 o'clock in the morning and I was still packing for our travel. I had stopped packing at 3 a.m. and went to sleep because I could hardly stand up anymore--I hardly had more than 3 hours of sleep every night for several weeks prior to that day! When I woke up at 4 a.m. for the night prayer, my son was still busy scanning some final papers for me and he told me he hadn't slept.
Our flight was scheduled to depart from LAX at 4pm that day. I asked my son to get some sleep. We had some time to get what I need to do before we had to go to the airport. My dear friend whose home we stayed at for the night had finished cooking breakfast in the kitchen and had called out for us to eat. I was then checking my email and there it was, an email from the airline re my itinerary. To my surprise the flight from LAX was changed to 12:30pm from 4pm, 3.5 hours earlier!
I rushed my kids to quickly take their shower because we had to leave immediately. We had only 3 hours before the flight leaves! And the airport was more than an hour away without traffic. Alhamdulillah we decided to take up my friend's offer to spend the night at her home which is about half way between my house and the airport! Alhamdulillah, we did not encounter the normal rush hour traffic on the way to the airport and we arrived at the airport at 10:30 a.m. We should have just enough time to check in. But we couldn't self-check in because of security issues and the only person who could help us with this issue was busy with another family. After waiting for about an hour, I started looking at the clock more often. It didn't seem like we were going to make it. It was almost 12 noon and they hadn't finished. It would be an impossibility to make it to our 12:30 pm flight and if we missed this flight we would missed all the connecting flights!
What do you do? My boys looked at me and I looked at them, the clock was ticking. I then said, "Well...He knows and He wills! Make du'a! InshaAllah, we will make it."
Finally, the people in front of us stepped aside and the airline rep told me to wait for 15 minutes to take his lunch break. I said, "O please, our flight is at 12:30pm!" He was nice enough to continue working. Alhamdulillah. When he looked at my self-checkin reject paper, he said---"this is a difficult one!" (meaning it has to go a long process to try to get clearance). "Why so?" I asked. He said "Yours are the same as the people before you and we had to refer theirs."
He was quite optimistic and efficient though. He said, "I will do my best and while we wait, we will weigh the bags and when the clearance come we only need to tag them." He kept praising my boys who were working together with me and him with the bags while he diligently checked the computer screen for security clearance. By the time we got to the last bag he announced the good news and he quickly tagged our bags. Now it was time to access the excess baggage (3 extra!). He charged me very little on the excess baggage. I said, "thank you but why are you giving me a break?" He said, "because you and your sons waited for a long time and that is not right. I don't know anything about Islam, but I think you and your family are good people." He asked us to follow him to the security so we could get to the gate quickly as the plane was about to depart. I gave him my book, "Reflections of a Wayfarer," and he thanked me for the surprise gift and said he would definitely read it.
I tell you this story to illustrate how other people look at us. If we want to represent Islam well, we need to act well, especially in public. People do look at us. If you carry Muslim names or wear hijab, you are not free to do what you want. You must make sure you behave well in public because if you don't, you have done a great disservice to Islam. The people ahead of us were arguing and impatient. They were Muslims but the ladies didn't wear hijab.
May Allah make us among the people of noble character. Ameen. Please don't forget us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.
And Allah knows best.
Wassalaam
