Top 5 things that i have learned in Egypt :)

Today I'm going to write something related to my favorite country (next to my own:D) in the whole wide world, Egypt.

 I have visited Egypt 3 times so far, and I can't wait for my next visit, i'm having travel fever, but unfortunately i didn't manage to go yet this year :( ... 

1. Walking across the street (and this especially refers to bigger cities, such as Cairo) 

If u're from Europe, as I am, and if u go to Egypt for the first time, u'll be surprised to find out that there

are no traffic lights there! Yup, that's right, and actually there are not much traffic signs, not as i recall... 

There are some Zebra crossings, but not even close to what u'd be used to in Europe... Though, honestly, there is not much use from them, so you need to be really adaptive to cross the freaking road.

Let's say there is 15 million of cars in Cairo ( and i believe the number is even bigger), sometimes it can be very tough.

( photo taken from google, credits to whoever has taken it :) i guess E. Corbero as photo says:D)

What u should not do : 

Wait for car to stop, cos it ain't gonna happen' :)

What u should do: 

Be brave, and just start moving slowly across the road, step by step, and most probably no car will run over you :p 

Since i've been doing that in Cairo, i do it more often now in Croatia too (even if police catches you in doing so u get some fine, but this happens so rare cos their presence on streets is very rare :D)...

Now i feel so confident and i cross the road even when cars coming, standing on the half way waiting for cars to pass and i must say it's been very efficient and time saving skill :) .

2. Talking to people won't kill you (talking to strangers)

One of things i picked up from Egypt, and i really like is that people in Egypt talk...

Now u might  think- duh stupid, people talk everywhere... And oh yes, they do, but Egyptians talk to everyone. If Egyptian enter taxi, he will probably say his whole life story to taxi driver (what he does for living, where he lives, how many siblings he has, even what's his favorite freaking meal). If u stand on the street and someone stands near you, you will most certainly end up talking. Everyone is so friendly, there are no awkward silences. If you are Egyptian and you enter small shop u'll end up talking big with the worker or shop owner... 

Opposite than in Egypt, people don't do much that here. U might wait 20 mins for bus everyone will keep quiet, except eventual old person, or maybe just nervous one that will complain about it. But still everyone else will most probably be quiet.

3. Valuing food

Here, as much as in rest of Europe or America, when you eat, you put things on your plate, if you can't eat anymore you throw them in garbage...In Egypt people take their food seriously. One won't get up from the table until he finishes his food. One will finish his food even if it means one shall explode. 

And pleae note, Egyptian meals are not like meals here much... It is consisted of  several sequences, and each sequence will probably be big as your normal lunch back at home....

(Photo taken from here :) )

One day i was eating with my bf at Gad, Egyptian food restaurant chain, and we couldn't finish it so my bf told the waiter to pack it so he can give it to someone!!!When we entered taxi, he gives it to taxi driver and at first i felt quite embarrassed, what will the taxi driver think. If u did this in Zagreb, he would probably get offended or something. But taxi driver took it instantly and said 'shokran',which means thank you in Arabic. Food that is left after lunch (untouched of course, cos everyone eats from his plate lol) is often given to those in need, because in the end there are many poor people there, and that respect for food is really amazing, wish people act like that everywhere in the world.. :)

4.Handling prices

During your stay in Egypt, you will have to gamble least once. If u go with touristic agency, your tour guide will tell u it's part of tradition and people might even get offended if u don't gamble. :D Well yes it is part of tradition, and it's considered completely normal, but i'm pretty sure people will be very happy if you don't gamble and they're able to earn couple more pounds, hehe. 

Before i went to Egypt, i never gambled in my whole life. Sure i know people who do, my mum does on certain occasions, but such occasions are rare, and it's very unlikely you'll succeed to achieve much better price anyway. I always found handling very uncomfortable and was too shy to do it, but i most certainly don't anymore hehe. 

U MUST HANDLE! seriously!!! 

For example, u might ask about price for some freaking necklace, and the seller will tell u it's 100LE, and afte 10 minutes you will walk out of the store with only 20 LE less in your wallet. 

Also, prices got up, and it's not due to inflation/or bad political situation in country. 

There are rich tourists that buy everything at the price seller offers first, so it makes sellers less likely to sell u for lower price, but everything is possible with little bit of charm and patience (sabr!).

5. Every girl is beautiful

During my staying in Egypt, it was really refreshing how little people care about beauty norms that are forced upon all of us through magazines, television and so on. To any girl that has a low self esteem i'd recommend a visit to Egypt immediately! Same as every girl, i deal with certain self esteem issues when it comes to the way i look, and I swear i feel so much better about myself since the first time i visited Egypt. Arabs are very outspoken when it comes to flirty, and same goes with Egyptians too. Often very romantic and very nice on worlds. Sure there are guys who will flirt with women just because she is European and they wanna piece of European cake aka visa or anything, but most of guys really feel honestly attracted to any type of girl. No matter if u're too skinny, bit chubby, have dark or light skin, blond, brown or any other hair color, in their eyes you are beautiful. 

At first, and i feel very bad about it, i couldn't help myself but to comment all those couples, very handsome Egyptian guys with girls i didn't find even bit attractive... But honestly, since then i grow to think of everyone as beautiful as well...  Every girl deserves a little dose of love from Egypt, so i strongly recommend, yalla, go to Egypt and enjoy ;) .


Thank you for reading, Neli :)

How i converted to islam & Things every non muslim should know about it!

Living in a mainly catholic country, raised as a one(catholic) too, many people were shocked to find out that i have converted to Islam. Like elsewhere in the West, people think its violent religion abusive to women, arguing that it strips them of their rights, saying many other none senses that I consider an uninformed hate speech. If you want to see my comments on main anti Islamic stereotypes, but are lazy to read my story- feel free to scroll down to that part. 

I will never forget the day when my brother told me we’re all going to die eventually.  I was around 5 years old playing in my room and I don’t know how those words exactly slipped out of his mouth, but after that I instantly started to cry. Shock, disbelief, I couldn’t handle the painful truth, despite the fact I was just a child and didn’t understand much about life. Going with usual child innocence, it seemed normal to me to live with your loved ones forever…

I guess that fear of death became my main motive in the pursuit of the answer to the question that most of us asked least once in our lives- is there a life after death?

Ceiling inside Al Hussein's mosque in Cairo

I was raised as a catholic and had even accepted 3 sacraments.  Everyone does it here, despite the fact most of people are agnostic anyway. First we do it because our parents decide for us, and after that most of us just care for money and gifts that follow after ceremony celebrations, lol.  

 So even though i was christian on paper, I couldn’t accept to believe in something just because i'm born in Croatia. I always thought- what if I was born in China, India, or any other country. I would probably be a Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or who knows what. Because of that, since a very young age I read about all popular religions, not sticking to monotheism only, but discretely peeking into a world of polytheism too. Despite polytheism never made sense to me, same way Christianity didn’t (and the concept of the holy trinity ), I felt it’s my duty to read from all available religious resources. After all, I’m just an individual and my knowledge is very restricted, so who am I to make conclusions about things I do not know of… 

 Strangely enough I never read of Islam, even it’s the 2^nd largest religion, today maybe even number 1 due to rapid raise in number, honestly I don’t know.  I guess it was due to all the western propaganda that we face with on daily bases, especially after the September 11^th of 2001. The magic oriental world of Aladdin was replaced with brutal Arabo-Islamic culture that creates terrorists and encourages violence, strips women from their rights, forcing them to cover themselves and allowing men to have up to 4 wives. And I guess as much as I was raised to respect everyone and not have prejudices about things I know nothing of, it kind of stick deep inside my mind.

This propaganda that we have to deal with on daily bases is completely wrong and very disrespectful, and I want to clear some things up.

So how did I finally got in contact with it u may ask…

Well it all started in 2^nd grade of high school. I always enjoyed challenging debates, so one day during the history class, somehow some random discussion we were having changed its direction to Islam. Suddenly my classmates started to talk bad about this religion, we all heard of, but knew very little. As I always do, I started to oppose their opinions and found myself defending this ‘cruel’ religion. I thought – there r millions who follow it, there must be good in it. So our very weird and unusual professor told me to make a class project about it, and so I did. I googled a lot, read on forums, and became very positively surprised of what I found out. I even started reading the translation of Kur'an we had at home ( that my dad bought to my mum long time ago, as she is born in a muslim family- more about that other post). I read about it’s beginnings, prophet Mohamed s.a.w.s. (peace be upon him),  first people that accepted it and so on… 

 So here is basically what I told to my classmates, among some other things, the main things everyone should know about  Islam.

MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS  ABOUT ISLAM

Does Islam teaches us to hate?

Islam is not a religion of hatred or violence. Actually the word ‘Islam’ comes from Arabic word ‘salema’ and means peace.  Islam encourages us to be in good relations with everyone who does us no harm, and to respect everyone no matter to their skin color, race, shape, religion and so on.

Is Islam oppressing women?

No. Islam doesn’t strip women  of their rights, but actually gave them their rights. Qur’an states that men and women have equal rights, but we need to be aware that men and women are different, and some have more rights in one matter, and some in others. For example, a mother has 3 times more right to make decisions related to her children than their father.

 In pre Islamic Arab world, female newborns were often killed buried in the ground, as they were often considered of no value, to some nothing but sex objects that give birth to children, and often were treated even worse than animals. Islam forbid that pagan tradition, stating every life is from God and very valuable. Islam encourages al people, not only men, to study and educate, to use their talents and to be productive members of the society.

Does Islam allow men to marry 4 wives?

Yes it does, but before you make any conclusion, please hear me out. When Kur’an verses were first revealed to Mohamed s.a.w.s.,  he lived in Saudy Arabia, and back then people used to believe in more gods, worshiping statues and living immoral lives. As his duty, Mohamed spread the word about  Islam, but many people didn’t like that at the time.  He became a treat to the local tribes and the city rulers that earned good money from tourists that visited Kaaba, the centre of Mecca’s religious life. Back then it was full of various merchants who earned good money from those tourists. Proving their belives wrong was a direct treat to their businesses. So it ended up with bunch of tribes announcing the war against Mohammed and His followers. In these battles, many men died and many women remained alone.

All of this took place in 7^th century, and back then there was no way for women to take care of themselves. Just like everywhere else in the world, men were the one to take care of home, and it wasn’t easy to be alone independent woman like now. So Kur’an allowed marrying men up to 4 wives (some stats say back then there was 4 time less men) if there is need for it and if they can take care of them. Prophet Mohammed was the only one with privilege to marry more, as a person of great iman(strong connection to God) and because it was very necessary in a goal of spreading Islam (making good connections with tribe leaders and so on.) Also please note that man can not marry more wives if his wife doesn’t approve of that !

Quran states

"If you fear that you will not be just/equitable to the orphans, then marry as permissible for you, women, two, three or four. But if you fear you will not be just/equitable, then one or to whom you are committed to by oath. That is better so that you do not deviate from the right course". 4:3

Personally, I feel that Islam is not encouraging anyone to marry more wives, but allowing it if there is need.  Very few man could pull this off, their level of iman should be very high so they could treat all wives equally, and even Qur’an states : 

"You will never be able to do perfect justice between wives even if it is your ardent desire,.. 4:129

There is a great article by Blue Abaya, and if you wanna know more about this matter, please check it out here http://blueabaya.blogspot.com/2011/11/sharing-husbands-is-caring.html :) .Her blog posts talks about polygamy in KSA where there is much more men than women, and no need for such marriages, yet old men marry young virgins, instead of needy widows eh… In my personal opinion it’s sad that people today abuse this right, and I personally belive it’s a  bad and greedy act.Please note- Islam has no flows, but people do.

For those westerns that are shocked about polygamy remember that many men and women practice it every day- just outside of marriage, cheating on their wives/husbands and doing many other bad things.

So if women have rights, why are they forced to cover up?

Women are not forced to cover up, but Kur’an asks all people for modesty in clothing. It’s mentioned in surah Noor (light) asking women to hide their beauty and show it only to their husbands, and for men to lower the gaze – not to make women feel uncomfortable.  All Islamic schools agree thatIslam believes there is no force in faith, therefore no one can force women to cover if she doesn’t want to do so.

If you think covering up is so back in time, then remember that the first people used to walk around almost or completely naked, now how about that lol.

I find it very hard to understand that Christians make so many criticisms of this very matter, yet Christian nouns walk around completely covered as well, and they should be a role models to Christian women as a women of great faith , or not ?

On this picture u can see some orthodox nuns on the left, and khaliji muslim women on the right :)

 And am 

sharing this pic cos i loved it, muslim woman on the left, and catholic noun on the right :)

Jihad- “holy war” ?

Uneducated people often think of Jihad is like a muslim duty to have wars against non muslims :(  As I said up there, Islam encourages us to, despite our differences, we should  have mutual respect, help each other etc.Jihad should be used to defend Islam and Muslims only in cases when someone else attacks you first.Islam never tolerates unprovoked 

aggression from its own side!Also Jihad doesn't only refer to war...

Qur’an says : 

“ Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loves not trangressors”

Mohammed, s.a.w.s. (peace be upon him) said :

"The best Jihad is the word of Justice in front of the oppressive Sultan [ruler]."

Yea but what about suicide terroristic attacks? countless number of virgins as reward and all that ?

Well my dear reader… Before all I want to say- that it’s strictly forbidden to hurt innocent people and that whole virgin story is blown over proportions, and u can easily google it. Honestly, I can sum it up in one sentence. There is few thousand people that died from terroristic attacks in past 10 years, while there is over 1 million of civil victims in Iraq and the number is growing cos of the weapon that US army uses which contains depleted uranium. What would you do if your country was attacked or occupied with absolutely no valid reason- having no options to fight back due to the fact u’re much weaker with much less resources. Terrorism is an act of desperate people. Imagine those children in Palestine that grow up watching shotguns pointing them every day, seeing their mother being killed for no reason and so on. It’s a very complex matter indeed.

Many people told me they liked my presentation and didn’t know many of these things. I felt so happy to that i was able to teach someone about something lol... Few months later I converted to Islam. It happened after I started visiting mosque and having long discussions with my friend I temporarily had crush for and met over internet. I guess I was meant to be attracted to him to be more found of new informations he was giving me. The day I accepted Islam it suddenly gone, and I felt nothing to that person anymore, well nothing in romantic sense. And few months later I started long distance relationship with my long time Egyptian friend, I never felt attracted to before, but I became more found of him after i accepted Islam. 

To add- I’m not trying to make anyone look bad, or make myself look good… During my journey I met some amazing Muslims, but in some of them I got very disappointed. You all know that often people are not the way they seem to be… There are good people in every shape, form, color, religion :) and in our life we all seek for same- meaning of life, love, compassion and so on… I found myself in Islam… someone will find himself in worshipping mother nature, someone can feel more through Christianity and so on. In the end, I feel it doesn’t matter, as long as we do what we feel is right and not hurting others on purpose :)God bless you all :) 

Thank you so much for reading… This was pretty much everything in one post, and I’m gonna blog more about individual subjects more in future...