A Bestfriend

Today's post is truly dedicated to my best friend, Fauziah Fakhrunnisa. I was going to write this exactly on her birthday, 20th of October. But I was “surprised” by the assignments and projects which made me promise that I’m going to write this after all things are done. After weeks of procrastinating, I’m now telling stories about our wonderful and unique friendship.

Fauziah, or Fau, is an amazing young woman. She is the only person who knows most details of my life more than anyone else, including my parents. She is one of the people I feel comfortable talking with. And she is the ONLY one whom I feel comfortable talking with about the most serious, intense, controversial, intimate, and embarassing stories you could ever imagined. She is an understanding and caring person who will hardly tell you that you are doing the wrong thing. Instead, she will give you advices and ideas and give you a space to think about them by yourself. She is a few people in this world who will accept every bad opinions about herself and never afraid to make a change in her life. I adore her way of thoughts: connecting what she learns from life with our religion, Islam. I learn a lot of things from her and love every single “word of wisdom” she created.

kekasih sejati kita, cinta sejati kita adalah Allah. sedangkan suami kita adalah pendamping untuk kita menuju Allah.

That was a sentence created by her in our last chat days ago. We are thousands miles apart, but we manage to chat through YM at least every months. During a free time, we could chat almost 10 hours a day talking mostly about religion, marriage, family, future, and dreams. Sometimes I call her if I have extra money in my pocket LOL. Anyway, Fau and I have similarities in most issues. Both of us hate how the guys treat the girls nowadays. We once “planned” to create an organization which stressed on women’s rights. We are dreamers, who are hungry with education and want to explore every corner of earth before we get married. And we both want to be the best wife and mom in the world .

I first met Fau in Mad’s in 2000 and quickly noticed that she was and is still a brilliant, talented, and smart person whose opinions are worth listening. Her thoughts and ideas were as mature as 23 years old women, but actually, she was a year younger than me. Attending the school in Mad’s means living away from her parents who lived in Brunei Darussalam and be an independent person for the first time in her life. Few people, including me, quickly knew that she was a spoilt girl. I don’t really remember what she did that time, but I remember that she made me distracted by it, simply because I never like a spoilt person. But I didn’t care about it, since she was not one of my closest friends at that time.

It was not until the next year that both of us had the opportunity to know each other well. As usual, every semester we had a "room exchange" so that we could have different roommates and interact with different type of people twice a year. I got a chance to live with Fau and two other girls in a room. As the time passed, I got to know Fau’s personalities. She was a typical "good girl" who was never late for school, talked politely to anyone, and never missed a single prayer. Everything about her was so positive! She was and is still a perfectionist who was very crazy about books, especially Harry Potter. Fau and I were close, but I don't think we talked and shared a lot of serious things together. We were still bundled in a teenager way of life where everything was only about fun, happiness, and “craziness”. Nevertheless, she became one of my closest friends I had. And she is still and will be my closest friend.

But everything didn't go very well. In 2002, both of us suddenly stop talking to each other. We tried to ignore one another, make less eye contact, and avoid going with the "same friends". Of course, there was a reason behind it. But sorry, no further explanation about that. We didn't have a fight, it just happened naturally. It was really hard. Because I attended the same school, slept under the same dorm, prayed in the same mosque… it's just so hard to avoid everything from her. Not only was it a hard time for me, but also for everyone who was close to both of us. Nupe – one of my close friends – told me that whenever she wanted to go out with some friends, she had to picked one of us, either me or Fau. She couldn’t invite both of us, because she knew it would be very, very odd.

Meanwhile, after a year or so without any conversation, I decided to rebuild our friendship when the first time I knew that Fau was going to live in the same unit with me. A unit consisted of 3 rooms, each with 4 beds. My room faced her room and it was really impossible to ignore her. I followed my heart that I had to make a first step to rebuild our friendship, otherwise I would miss the chance: we were in the last semester of our stay in Madania, and I might have not seen her after that. Of course it was hard and odd for the first time, but we managed to talk to each other like before . Everytime we remember about our “talkless time” in Mad’s, we laugh like crazy! Sacrifice our friendship for something ridiculous??? It was the stupidest thing we’ve ever done in ourlives!!! We promised not to repeat the same mistake again. My dream, her dream, our dream is to remain friends until both of us are married, have kids, grown old, die, and hopefully send to heaven (Insya Allah). Love you, Fau!