I came to Canada, to University of Regina, Saskatchewan. A place no one has even heard of. Neither had I . There was no internet back then, so we couldnt even know how the place looked like. Isnt that funny? Just going blind into a place thinking it will open more ways for me.
I had very limited financial resources so I had to make the best use of money I had and I couldnt afford to do bad at school either. I had to perform at the school because the burden on my mothers shoulders was just too much. I was a good student. My first year was really good because I wrote some challenge exams for some courses. If you passed a challenge exam, you would pass the course and you didnt have to pay for that course. This is exactly what I needed. I finished all the calculus courses in my first year. I was getting the hang of the university education. My first year result was really good. Deans Honor List and medals but all that really didnt mean much to me because I was still struggling financially. My maths and Stats department called me and asked if I was willing to mark assignments on stipend.
Us din may bahut khush tha kay kisi tarah to ammi ka bojh kam ho ga. Phir khabar mili kay sab say chota bhai, Faisal, bhi meray paas aa raha hay. He got a scholarship from my university. He was a smart kid and I was happy that we can live together.
Beech wala bhai, Gul ka bhi aik university may admission ho gaya lekin woh hum say kaafi door tha. Gul khan ajeeb matti ka bana hua hay. Bahut ziddi, bahut qabil, aur mann ka moji. Gul kay dil may jo sama jaye woh kar kay hi dam leta hay.
Ab teen bhaiyon ka bojh ammi kay kandhon per. Phir abu ka khayal rakhna. Kaisay karti ho gi ammi sab kuch, may sochta tha to chakkar aa jaatay thay.
Then I thought that the plan would be just to finish my studies and go back and help my mother take care of everything. At least I will be able to help her with financials after I am graduated from the university and she will be able to relax a little bit. For that I started taking extra courses in my semesters because I wanted to graduate early and I started to find other ways to make money like teaching math on campus so I can help my brothers with their finances. But we plan and then Allah plans.
It was in the beginning of my third year that one day while i was fooling around on dalnet irc chat… this was way before there was messenger or Yahoo or Google.. Lol. It was a chat program and i often used to go to channel #Islam and make discussions there. My usual tagname on that channel was <Nasir1`> but for some reason that day the server would not let me keep that tagname and I randomly put a tagname <Ninn>. One day this tagname <al_lathiif> messaged me and asked some questions. I do not remember what the topic was but had a long chat about that topic. During that conversation we both got a surprise. I thought <al_lathiif> was a boy and it turned out that it was a girl and she thought <Ninn> was a girl and it turned out to be a boy.Then, we ran into that chatroom once in a while and occasionally had some discussions on various islamic topics ranging from politics to fiqh. Then slowly the conversations went into one on one chats and we started talking about where we were from and I found out that <al_lathiif> was from Indonesia and she was studying at a university called Trisakti and her major was Informatics Engineering. I cannot say her real name here but I called her Kulthum (Kulsoom). Kulthum, was struggling in her studies as most of her classes were programming and she had hard time understanding how to do programming. I was not bad in programming but I had no time to help her because of all the extra course load I had. She would ask me help in her assignments which I would pass on to Gul Khan who was a superb programmer and this way Gul and I helped her do her assignments. Many a times Gul would say that she just wants you to do her assignments but I did not get that vibe from her and I genuinely thought that she tries but she didn't understand it enough to be able to finish the assignment. Soon, I was feeling as if I was enrolled in two universities.
