Habibullo-Eugene Kiselev

A Synopsis of my Life
2017-06-24 23:50:15 (UTC)

June 24th, 2017, Saturday, 11:50:15 p.m.

Yekaterinburg, Russia. GMT 05:00
This day was a day of contrasts. I mean, that many different things happened to me, and all of them were dramatically different from each other, as they begot different emotions. My mom and I had a quarrel this afternoon, and I am still feeling ashamed.
At about 6 o’clock, I went to the “Ramadan” mosque to participate in the ʻĪd al-Fiṭr. The holiday tabernacle was decorated with an inscription, which said “Shatër Ramadana. Dobro pozhalovat’! Blagotvoritel’ny proekt.” (English: “A Ramadan Tabernacle. Welcome! A charity project.”). Having finished with the evening ṣalāt, my friend Dmitry, a boy from Tajikistan named Karmatullah and I went to the store to buy some ping pong balls for Karmatullah. We had a marvelous time together. As we set off from the mosque, we followed down Griboyedova street right to the store, where Dmitry bought those table tennis balls for Karmatullah.
On our way back to the mosque, we were passing by the Secondary School #105, where I was doing my pre-graduation teaching practice in 2009. I did not fall into reminiscence for now.
Having returned to the mosque, we started helping with the holiday tabernacle, laying the tables with fruits, berries, slices of lavash (flat unleavened wheat bread), juice and water. This was, no doubt, a really odd experience. I worked with men and women of different ethnic and linguistic background; I even met a girl named Nadiya, who has recently graduated from “The Cook” (Russian: Kulinar), the culinary school I graduated from in 2014.
Most of the women, who were at the celebration, came with their little sons and daughters, who were being entertained by a female clown. She was telling them rhymed jokes and playing fun games. In particular, she was amusing them with the following nursery rhyme: “V Ramadane mi postilis’, /Ne rugalis’ i ne zlilis’”. (English: “We spent the Ramadan a-fasting, / Not a-cursing, nor a-blasting!”) She was clad in a bright costume of red, crimson, orange and yellow colors and had a red clownish nose. I instinctively harked back to the times of my childhood, which, unfortunately, was not imbued with the events like this one.
I also met my friends from the Ural State Mining University, Telej Hasanbekov (Kumyk Cyrillic: Телей Гьасанбеков)‎ and Alpha Bah. We talked a great deal of the time. After the ṣalāt, which was spiritually rich, we went to the tabernacle to have our refreshments there. I was sitting with Alpha, and we were speaking French. We had soup with macaroni, rice with mutton and potatoes and some plums. That was delicious! I liked it so much. We also listened to the imām, Ənvər Xəzrət Xәbirov, and some clergy in authority from the Muslim Religious Board for Europe and Siberia.
After the celebration, Telej Hasanbekov brought me to my house by his own car. On our way, we talked about the Muslim faith, religion, and he also told me he was going to move to his motherland of Dagestan soon.




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