Background Story: Part 2

 

So yes in the next 21 years. Dunya seeped in and made no room for the Quran in my heart. Yikes that was really scary.

One year before the Covid pandemic, everything changed. 

Allah opened up my heart to start taking care of my prayers and to pray on time. And I during that Ramadhan I picked up my very dusty Quran and just read ONE surah in that month. Then I closed it and never came back to it that year. My recitation was slow and many many mistakes were made. My makhraj and tajwid? Gone.

Enter Covid 2020. The fateful pandemic that put everyone in lockdown. Time to sit and stew and contemplate the meaning of life. That was life-changing for many, including me.  That Ramadhan I read more Quran than the year before, and I continued reciting and reading the meaning for months after. I had to relearn how to recite, how to pronounce the letters. How to read with tajweed (back then I thought tajweed only meant the Nun rules. Never thought that tajweed spanned way beyond that). I used Muslimpro and this random dude's recitation to guide me (a year later I discovered that this random dude was the famous Saad Al Ghamidi). Slowly, to get better at recitation became my life's mission. It wasn't easy to force myself to recite regularly. But with Allah's help, my heart slowly softened and would crave the Quran sometimes. Best of all, I discovered Yasir Qadhi's Message of the Quran series and that upped my Quran game by a thousand points. Finally I understand what some of the surahs meant, the backstory behind It's revelation. And discovered beautiful Quranic duas that I commited to memory. I also learnt through this journey, the stories of the Prophets. Beautiful MashaAllah. 

In 2021- i completed reciting the entire Quran including reading it's meaning. And ventured into Quran tagging. One of the best memories I had. Every night spending time reciting and tagging the verses that touched my heart.

Alhamdulillah from then, a Quran fiend was born. Ramadhan 2022 I khatamed the Quran for the first time within a month. Best memory yet.

A lot was changing in my life. I had to make time in my schedule to dedicated it to the Quran. I traded my music listening in the car - with listening to educational Quran videos. Yasir Qadhi, Nouman Ali Khan and Omar Suleiman replaced BSB in my spotify. It was harddddd to cut down music and I did not do it overnight. Took me years.

But I was still reciting to myself and by myself. As far as I was concerned, I sounded just like Saad Al Ghamidi.

Then I realised it was time to find a teacher, someone to correct me and teach me the proper makhraj and tajweed.

Alhamdulillah found a lovely ustazah in 2023 from a humble Quran academy online. She's Malaysian but born and raised in Saudi so she had the makhraj perfect, and I wanted to pronounce letters like her. She was gentle, never scolded. So different from the ustaz and ustazahs I've had in childhood. And so recitation became my project. I was going to REALLY sound like Saad Al Ghamidi eventually.

Sorry, needed a part 3.