It's so weird - all my life, I've been obsessed with reading - from cereal boxes at breakfast, to air-freshener cans in the toilet, to everything else you can imagine - I'm like the Hungry Caterpillar when I read. I plough through books like there's no tomorrow, and I've read so many that most of them become a blur in my mind. And yet, to my shame, I haven't read the Qur'an in translation, cover to cover. What a miserable failure. The trouble was that there were always other books - books that were easier to read, that seemed more, 'yay fun!' or something, and there were always so many - even to the point where I was leaving, I had, like sixty million library books at home - under the bed, under my desk, on my desk, on the windowsill, in mum's room - everywhere (you may laugh, Shaun, you may laugh XD). Of course (don't worry, John!), I had to give them all back before I came. Books are like, my staple diet - from bookerpillar, to working in a library, to working in a library and a bookshop...books, books, books, to paraphrase slightly rip off Katy (whose lifelong refrain was 'boys, boys, boys') XD

Anyhow (I'm sorry, I'm easily sidetracked)(I easily sidetrack myself, even), with all those other books to distract me, I never quite had the patience to read the Qur'an - you know how it is, the moment someone tells you to do something Islamic, people suddenly lose enthusiasm, despite being all jazzed up before (ain't that the way?). Mum and dad were always telling me - telling all of us - at least to read something Islamic, for god's sake, for x number of trashy books I read (this was after giving up on telling me not to read trashy books)(I am such a trial to my mama and papa O_o) but of course, being us, we didn't really change. Here, though - dad said straight off that no one was allowed to bring any trashy books (our luggage allowance was already crummy)(that wasn't the reason why, though), and that if we got bored, we would just have to read Qur'an. I balked a bit at first, but then I remembered that if I got desperate, I could download stuff off the internet XD XD

So yeah, mum and dad always turn out to be right, it just takes me a long time to get there. That's the trouble with kids and adults - mum and dad always know what they're talking about - clearly, they speak from experience; the trouble with people in general though, is that nobody likes secondhand experience. You also never quite learn a lesson so well unless you experience it yourself. And then! Then you're all, 'omg I know this, I know this!!' and you try to tell someone else and they shake you off, go and do dumb things, and then they're like, 'omg I know now O_O.' Tradeoffs, tradeoffs. Being a parent/similar must be like being Cassandra. Nobody listens.

Ack! 888 More digression! Sorry!

I know the Qur'an is amazing - it's a fact of life for me, just like the sky is blue, and things fall down. But I've never felt so close to it, or felt the perfection and wisdom of it more, and I realise I want to know it better, I want to be so familiar with it that I can think of an ayah and know where it is - knowing Harry Potter back to front and inside out is, in short, a waste of time and no use for my akhirah. If I knew Qur'an as well as I knew Harry Potter!! I'm feel really ashamed that there are books I know every detail about, and films that I can recite the script for, and yet I don't half that much about the Qur'an. Heh, some muslim. The trouble with books, too, is always that they finish too soon - I get to the end, and am like, 'you can't be finished! How can you be finished??!! Nuuuu please don't be finished!' and the thought briefly crossed my mind that what if the Qur'an finishes too soon and I want more and there isn't more? That would be too sad; it's not like there will be a sequel O_O But the Qur'an is long! It won't be finishing anytime soon! It'd take a lifetime and some to get right to the bottom of it, and even then, there would be more to it, because it is Kalaam-Allah.

So I think this year will be dedicated to improving my relationship with the Qur'an, inshallah. I said that to Tabs, and she was like, 'Affa, you're so DUMB!!! What do you think mum and dad have been SAYING forEVER?!!?!' 'cause I was all, 'WOW THASSO COOL,' about the whole thing. XD