Bon Voyage !
I had been planning since the start of september to go elsewhere and to be more precise where it is long-established in my family to visit the Arabian soil to seek divine inspiration at the two most revered places.I confided my urge with my father & found him on the same wavelength.Having coming to know about similarity of thoughts ,my idea seem to have worked and I was overwhelmed by imagination of being there at the 2 holy places and that’s too in Ramadan.The main impedance was examination schedule.Eventually ,it was decided that we will be visiting in the tail-end of the month on 27th of Ramadan.The date was overlapping with one of my paper that of LDST-II but that was something manageable but during those days I went through hoop.It was happy-go-lucky kind of stuff.
On 18th October just before dusk I was at the Airport to take the flight to Jeddah.The equipment was my blue-eyed aircraft B747-367 registered as AP-BFX with enlarged upper deck & some new accessories.During the taxi and take-off I broke the fast and meanwhile kept on calling the near and dear ones just to kill the time.The plane was empty so I assumed myself to be the prince Jollywood of the plane as all cabin crew was familiar to my father who was sitting next to me.I turned on the LCD panel on my front-seat which was showing some really cool parameters.Eventually the plane rotated to taxi point and in few seconds the 4 Rolls-Royce engines of the Boeing plane made a deafning roar & the plane lifted off from less than half of run way.I was fortunately sitting at the place where I can see all nice movements of the plane after getting airborne including the sound of landing gears and amazing wingflex due to heavy cross-winds hitting the plane's fuselage .In few seconds we were flying at altitude of 11600 m ( about 38000 feet ) with cruising speed of 858 Km/h with a magnificient skyline can be seen from the right porthole. The meal was served just after half an hour.I kept on reading the inflight magazines during this time and helping some Afghans to fill their forms which are often distributed during the flights.At around 7:58 Saudia Time I could see the breathtaking bird’s eyeview of the Jeddah City. The plane wheels hit the tarmac at King Abdul Aziz Int’l airport at local time 8:00 pm and the weather was no different than Karachi. We hurried to the Immigration counter where my father’s friend was awaiting to welcome. We were finished with all the necessary procedures in few minutes of time and were sitting in the Airport lavish restaurant.
We stayed at the lobby for around an hour during which I kept viewing the Airport wearing a complete modernized look within a year since I last hit the same location.We then moved to Makkah as we had arrived for 27th night of Ramadan but we could hardly able to participate in the night-long Dua’ session in the holy Mosque of Kaba.For the first time in my life I had to keep myself in wake-up mode for 26 consecutive hours that really made me doze off at the end of Umrah.This was again for the first time that I witnessed a stampede that was more than ever.I did all the prays which my friends wanted me to and also for those who weren’t able to say because of my hurried departure from the home country.The most annoying aspect and the fact that I have found over there is despite the whole-hearted efforts from the Saudi government there was hassle and panic everywhere around the Holy mosque that made the Ibadah’ somewhat a Herculean task rather than an easy-going business.
I figured out many important differences between society of Saudis and ours that what is the reason for us to stay behind from the rest of the world.The main and biggest reason being the needless and uncontrolled exposure of women in every sphere of our so-called Pakistan Islamic Society. This is another dilemma which I would surely write to draw the attention of at least the visitors by chalking out differences between the Saudi society and ours.
posted by M Shoaib Sheikh @ 11:34 AM
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