Just look at how it’s kept!
What a pleasure to be tucked in this loft in Birmingham, in a bedroom of my former scholar neighbour in Tareem – sleeping with his books, who graciously hosted my family and I for a private farewell lunch at his place where he also cooked days before I left Yemen.
On my previous trip to Birmingham, three 18 year olds I think they were, showed me their handphone’s wallpaper. And I saw a picture of this same neighbour in Tareem. They smiled and said, ‘yea Haafidh Wajid been teaching me since I was 3 years old. We miss him.’
*Or was it 6 years old.
**Haafidh an honourable term meaning he’s a Haafidh, someone who memorized the Qur’an. That’s a pic of him translating for Habib Kadhim in Dowra 2018.
التذكرة – بأحوال الموتى وأمور الأخرة للأبي عبد الله محمد بن أحمد بن أبي بكر الطبري
I initially took the first few pictures from at-Tabari’s at-Tadhkirah as personal reference as I’ll be teaching again the course on old age and death in Nottingham in February.
Chapter – (The Pain of) Death is an Expiation for All Muslims
This other book which is mostly similar (to al-Suyuti’s famous Sharh as-Suduur) but has this gem of a Hadith that gives insight to how pre-death pain is understood.
شرح الصدور بشرح حال الموتى والقبور للحافظ جلال الدين عبد الرحمن السيوطي
Deja vu..
Then I figured just do the other pics you’re seeing and document this whole thing and write about it and waste even more time on the phone instead of at least browsing some of these books I’ve selected from the shelves before I head to Leeds tomorrow morning.