May Allah stenght his iman and bless him forerver.Amin.
I was born in Frasher of Permet in 1986 in a family of bektashi origin, though my parents are atheists. At that time, religion was prohibited.
I can remember many things of my childhood in that village and I cannot forget the lots of visitors coming there and the feasts taking place in honour of the “Frasheri Brothers”. As far as I have been living there, I remember that, as soon as the sun dropped, my grandmother took me by the hand to a big stone and, after kissing that stone three times, we light a candle. And she always kept telling me: “This stone has always been protecting us from the Greeks and the Germans”, and we both used to kiss that stone.
Yet today, that stone is still lying there, and tradition is being upheld in that village, with people kissing it and lighting candles on it.
In the year 1991 all my family came to live in Tirana. During that time, the communist system in Albania was collapsing and religion was becoming free again. I remember that in 1991 here in Tirana, while queueing up for water at the drinking-fountain, women were talking over a problem that had come up at that time, and one of them said: “This is a thing that only God knows”. This has been the first time I have ever heard the word God.
To tell the truth, it impressed me very much and with the ? of the human I spontaneously felt the grandiosity of the creator.
It seemed to me as if I already knew that power, even thought it was the first time I had heard about him. That he knew everything! Even though 16 years have passed, I can still remember that situation as well as if it were yesterday.
After attending the first class in 1992, in the endings of the academic year, when we had learned how to read, we were provided with aid from some “people of God”. They were some Italian missionaries. Each child of our class was given 7 chocolates and 2 books. One book was about painting and the other one was about the “Jesus” history with pictures and writings. By giving away such things, the christian church captured my classmates’ hearts. The same things that were narrated in the “Jesus” history of the given book, were also presented in the afternoon on a TV cartoon. There was a red robot travelling in time and coming back to the various prophets’times, according to the christian version.
After watching and reading these things, my classmates and I would do nothing but talk about them at school. In a few words, we did like them. Our parents were atheists, as religion had been “unfettered” and nothing could stop us from believing those things. In the final analysis, we also believed in Santa Claus. Christians were always eager to take us in Church and teach us more about Jesus.
But our relationship with those “people of God” did not last long, because religion was allowed and my uncle wanted our family to uphold our bektashi grandfather’s tradition, as my village is the place where bektashism was first created. So, on ashure’s feast, he took all the family’s children along with him to celebrate. But I was not very attracted, as I did not see any other thing than poetry being read and some paintings of Imam Ali. The opposite went for my brother, who became a devoted bektashi and during that period of time, at home he was always talking about Imam Ali and bektashis in general. A very dissimilar thing happened to my uncle’s son, who emigrated in Greece and I don’t know the reason why he attended a school that would make a priest out of him. Some time later, he changed the religion of his family, turning them into Orthodox Christians, so I had no more chances of attending a masjid.
After 2 more years had passed, I went to the fourth class. There were constructed some one-floor facilities in a big field near my house. They contained some classes, a place with benches for reading, a church, and also some settings with computers. One day, a friend of mine that was not from my neighbourhood told me that in that girded place with many buildings (which was called ADRA, a christian sect), one could learn how to play the guitar, sing in a group (choir), there are yellow discs for Nintendo computers etc. So, on Saturday, I decided to go there, and I liked it very much.
There were speaches on various prophets’ stories, we used to sing, be used to pray all together etc. After going twice with this friend, I got to know 2 Albanian teachers there. They were young, a boy named Elvis and a girl named Genta. And I swear to great Allah that I would always go there and after a month,
I took 12-13 friends from my block of flats and we went there week by week. Even though I was 10 years old, I often used to conduct the prayer for all my friends. But it was great Allah’s will that in 1997 our relationship with our church friends was stopped, because that year civil war broke out due to the banks, and Americans moved out of Albania. After a short period of time, my relatives developped strong relationships with Jehovah’s witnesses, up to the point that, during the war in 1997, when Jehovah’s witnesses had no place to gather, they gathered at my relatives’ home.
I also started going to them and I had a personal teacher coming to my house twice a week. I used to make lots of questions to him, so he gave up, as I used to trap him within his own sayings. I was lucky, because he didn’t know much about his doctrine, so I was left again without a religion.
Considering that in 1998 I was at the sixth class of primary school and I was one of the students whose photo lay on the school’s wall (only best students could be honoured in that way), I used to study biology very well, and I got to the conclusion that human derived from monkey, because our school books’ texts are still nowadays the same as those of the communist regime period. But during this period I often used to suffer when in bed, because I used to think of my death and it seemed quite strange for me the fact that after death, I would feel nothing, as if I were asleep, whilst others would still be living and the world would still be evolving. This has been an awful time for me. Time and again, when I quarreled with my parents, I felt the urge to commit suicide, even though I had everything a child would have at that time. In 1999 I attended a soccer team and I can recall a member of my team telling to the others: “Guys, I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow with the match, because I am going to be thirsty, as I am fasting for Ramazan”. At that time, even though I had a direction to look toward for my life – I had made up my mind for becoming a soccer player – I could still feel that I was not impregnated and I had not given myself what I deserved. I also had an internal feeling about the muslim communion’s seriousness, because
I had watched them on TV praying for Bairam. But there were only old people
. So I asked this friend to take me with him to the mosque, in order to see how they prayed, because I had only watched them on TV for Bairam. My friend asked me: “Are you a Muslim so that I can take you with me?” “’Yes”’, I told him, “but I feel too timid to go there alone” (I don’t know how it came to me to declare myself a Muslim).
And the next day, after workout, I went to the Mosque with this friend for aksham’s namaz. There were 10 more days till Ramazan. It was December 27th 1999. Of course, as soon as I got to the mosque, I saw things that were different from what I had thought. They all behaved very gracefully with each other, they were very simple folks, and I liked very much the fact that they were eating with each other for iftar on the second floor. It was great Allah’s will that the following day I also fasted and sat down to eat with the other guys. And the days to come I took all my friends to the mosque. They all figured out that I was a beginner and they were all smiling at me, nobody gave me an angry look. The friend that brought me to the mosque was not able to come for some days, because his parents did not let him, and he introduced me to another guy, so that I could meet him every day and learn more about Islam.
A few months later I had the chance to go to a camp for 10 days and attend an intensive course on Islam. There were 2 professors from Mekka, named Abdurrashid and Sami. At that period of time, all I knew was the Fatiha and the Keuther Sures. In that camp, I learned the kursij ajet, and 8 last sures of Quran, one sure every day. Both professors were very caring, especially with me. First, because I was new in Islam, compared to the others, and second, because I was the youngest. The first day in that camp I became 14 years old. I learned everything there, for 10 days. After coming back from the 10-day camp with Muslims, my whole life changed. I remember I was ashamed to come back home, because I felt guilty of my previous behaviour towards my parents.
And you cannot imagine how much I was embarrased when I came face to face with my mother as I was going up the stairs home. I did nothing but put my head down and leave, because I could not see her, as I had been very unfair to her. I couldn’t keep myself from crying in the evenings since the last days when I was at the camp.
The same thing happened the very last day, when I must have cried for about 10 or 12 hours on and on. Today is the 27th of December 2007. Exactly 8 years have passed since the time I have joined Islam. For that, I give thanks to God who edified me and I pray to him so as not to become one of those people deviating from the straight path after being edified, as many of my muslim friends have done. Almost 70% do not pray regularly any more. The only thing I aspire to is to die as a muslim.
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