Dah nak habis Al-Imran

Aina called me last night just to tell me that she's going to finish memorizing Al-Imran by end of next week. Only Allah knows how proud I am of her.
She has really grown! I looked at old pictures of her and wonder where has all these years gone. From a tiny little baby she was, she had catched up with most of her peers in size, well maybe overtake most of them in terms of size. There's still hope that those are all still the baby fat showing up:-)

Aina and Anis...11 years ago

Anyway, from only a 2As score in her trial (it could be 3As or 1A only, there were so many trials that she had actually lost count which one to report to me) and to the actual 4As and only Jayyid Jiddan for PSRA that really got her nowhere to any of JAIS's school. She went to IQKL with a goal of getting into a classroom that has aircond. Even having to get up at 5 am in the morning couldnt make us change her mind. She had actually set her mind to go to IQKL when she entered Year 6. The goal was to be comfortable in a classroom with aircond. She didn't really like to do hafazan when she was in SRIIMDE. Cried most of the time when I tried to get her to recite the surahs that she was supposed to remember. Gosh, even Ahmad who was in Std 2 can beat her in hafazan when she was already at Std 6 last year. So, I had not much confidence of her surviving in IQKL - doing hafazan half of the time, waking up early in the morning and being away from family, on her own at that tender age. But because there were not much choice and she really insists on going there...we let her be.

The first week in asrama IQKL was a torture for her. I remember the first time she called...it was already Thursday. We sent her off on Sunday and waited for her to call. When she did call that Thursday, it was night and all I heard was a cry from her. She couldn't even talk! She had to hang up and call again a couple of minutes later. I cried together with her. Apparently, there is only 1 phone and the queue was long and only that Thursday she got her chance to make the call and thus the long cries. I missed the time when she was around..she's young, at the tender age of 12++ and had to leave home to pursue her studies. I missed scolding her to hang her towel or to walk faster or to put her cups in the sink or to help me out in the kitchen. The second call, we couldnt talk much. She just asked us to come and see her on Sat or Sun coz she can go for a day outing in the weekend and in her cries she asked to tell all her adiks..."Aina rinduu...". But ..Aina is happy in IQKL.

She started her Hafazan with Al-Baqarah. It was difficult for her at first. She was kind of left behind compared to her other friends. Mainly because of her tajwid. She can't move on until her memorization of the verses were recited with the correct basic tajwid (all the panjang pendek and dengung at the right place). When she did start to move on, she had catched up with her friends and even beat few of them. At one time, she was just behind the fastest girl in her class. But when she started getting her period (boy, was I really surprised, even though we had been waiting for this to happen when most of her friend already gotten theirs - my baby is a teenage girl now), the speed reduces a bit.

All in all, I am really proud of her achievement. Even though, she is still living in her own world (I'll write what I meant by this in another blog, later:-), she ...really, I am really proud of her. She accomplished what I thought she could never do. I have to put more faith in her. And hopefully, she will become a Hafizah, one day, Amin.

Aina and friends - nasyid, she's at the far right end

Aina and friends choral speaking about life as Hafizah