Another Reunion

Salaam,

From 3 weeks ago (sorry it's all a bit dis-jointed..):

So this weekend was another reunion. I took Friday off and at 6 am was trundling off to Heathrow airport to pick up a friend who was flying in from the US to visit. Alhamdulilla I had met him in Qasid in Jordan where we spent a term studying together and we got on pretty well with each other. Anyway he was on his way to India for his brothers wedding so decided to stop over in the UK for two days before flying on..i kept telling him me and the other ex-Qasid guys he was coming to visit weren't worth the effort, but he insisted.

I got to the airport quite early but then found out it would be at least 45 mins before he would complete finding his bag, going through immigration etc so I was faced with a lengthy wait. Anyway as I sat near the arrivals area I ended up with quite a sight with lots of people waiting for their loved ones...a wife greeting her husband, a mother greeting her child, a son greeting his father and this scene repeated over and over again and it was quite interesting just to witness this site and to think about the stories behind each group of people's separation...one set of Indian kids who had obviously been studying abroad as they were still wearing their uniform...another man who must have been a businessman coming back to his family...and so on....Also it was interesting to see how different people greet each other with the Malaysians being the most "unique" - from my observations it seemed that they kiss anyone older than them on the hand (Sufi style..) and kiss on the forehead anyone younger than them..interesting how different people and cultures express the same emotion.

It was also pretty cool just looking at the behaviour of people and how it changes with other factors..for example looking at the travellers arriving, then approaching the meeting point with their heads frantically darting left and right with excitement, trying to see where their loved ones are and as they continue to do this but can't locate them, second by second they seem to get increasingly concerned with this showing on their face..."have they not come?" "are they delayed?" etc etc....and then that moment....buddoooom....when they see their wife/husband/child/family and then they are reunited....human behaviour and the oddities of it is a bit of an interest of mine, as you might be able to tell....lol

Anyway when he arrived I took him back to the flat and he rested for a few hours before going to Regents Park Mosque for Jum'ah and then to Edgeware road for some lunch. On the Fri we ended up going to the Millennium eye at night which was quite cool with all of London lit up and then I took him to Harrods and showed him around there and that area. Given that he had been to London already I thought there would be no point in going to all the classic tourist sites again, so instead I ended up taking him and another Qasid-er who cam down from Dewsbury to Cambridge on Sunday. I had not been back to Cambridge in over a year so I had a bit of an overflow of memories coming back to me when we got there...it was pretty eerie too as it was deserted given that we had gone during the xmas holidays. In Cam we gave them the standard tour of the colleges and then went for a punt with the amrican oohing and aaahing at all the stories behind the colleges. And then on Sun morning we were back in Heathrow and off he went to India for the wedding.

Enjoyable weekend, alhamdulilla.

Salaams