Thinker's Retreat: Hayy Aashir

I live in a suburb of Cairo called “Hayy Aashir” (Area 10). It reminds me of the suburb I live in back in Sydney – Bonnyrigg Heights. Both are about an hour from downtown, far away from the touristy places. Both have a relaxing feel. I put that down to wide open spaces. In Bonnyrigg and its surrounding suburbs, there are lots of parks and nature reserves. In Hayy Ashir there is a place called “Souq as-Sayyaraat” (car market), which is literally fifty meters from my apartment. It is an empty concrete parking lot that stretches the length of two football fields. Twice a week it fills up with car sellers and buyers. On other days it becomes a football field. I love this place. Open space = open mind.

I’m not surprised I ended up here in Hayy Ashir, as it feels meant to be. But knowing about this apartment was not so straightforward. This is how it happened. The person who lives in the apartment I’m in was called by a brother that he doesn’t even know informing him about a brother from Australia (that’s me) looking for a room. This brother received a call from a certain “Ustad Ali” who is a Qur’an teacher in Hayy Aashir. I contacted Ustad Ali (who has never met me) a week beforehand asking if he knew of any vacant apartments in Hayy Aashir. He said he’d help me out. He kept his word. I got Ustad Ali’s number from a student of his called Muhammad, a brother from England, who I met in 2007 in Cairo when we lived in the same apartment. We only lived together for a week, but exchanged Facebook details and kept contact over the past eight years. Hence, through Muhammad > Ustad Ali > random brother > random brother I was told about a room in an apartment in Hayy Aashir. I had only met one of these people. God works in mysterious ways.

The reason I related this story is to highlight how important it is to make the most of any meeting with a person and to keep contact with him or her. Muhammad and I didn’t need to exchange Facebook details as we only knew each other a week. We could have simply said “hi” and “bye.” But because we decided to partake in a bit of brotherhood, I was able to find an apartment to move to in Cairo eight years later. SubhaanAllah!

I thank God for facilitating this move and looking after me in Egypt. May he reward all the people involved from beginning to end. Aameen.

Instead of writing a poem about Hayy Aashir, I decided to do something different for a change. So below are some photos and a video.