“Hold on to the special moments in your life, before they become just memories”

I will always cherish this moment, where three generations of the Khawaja family came together to perform one of the most special religious events in the muslim calander in the most holiest of sites, in Mecca.

Can we pull this off

As a family of faith, we’ve often spoken of our desire to perform Umrah in Mecca. Many a dinner’s, the food would have finished, and we’d still be sitting around the table late at night discussing our plans of ‘one day’ visiting Mecca…But I had my reservations.

For one, it’s usually very expensive to travel to Saudi during Ramadan, there are restrictions on the number of people that can attend from each country, our kids were still so young, and we feared they may not be able to adapt to the extreme heat. Furthermore, I had concerns for my mother’s health & wellbeing as well as for my own as I suffer from epilepsy, and I wasn’t too sure if I could handle the intensity of the moment.

Health concerns aside, we all led very busy lives and often travelling to different parts of the world on our own individual missions. As a family we’d try to schedule the best time for all of us to go, but eventually passing it on to the following year. One evening, the phone rang, it was my dad calling from Chicago, he said I’m booking our tickets for Saudi, (that’s great we all thought). But we’ll go during Ramadan, he remarked (perfect, we said), but that’s not all he said, I’ve decided we’ll spend the whole month of Ramadan in Mecca…Wow!

A leap of faith

There was a nervous excitement and a long pause, before my father said, “yes…okay??” …Yes, we all exclaimed in excitement!

Zeshan and Mukaddas in Mecca, 2023 I Image from the Khawaja family

I’m so happy we took that leap of faith and travelled to the most holiest of sites for Muslims. Standing there with my wife (above) right after having performed Umrah, you can see the delight and happiness in both our faces. We had finally completed an important part of our faith together as a couple and as a family.

We had arrived in the evening in Jeddah and travelled to Mecca. My father arrived later on in the night, and we all waited anxiously for his arrival in anticipation and excitement to walk out in the middle of Mecca to perform our first Umrah as a family.

By the time we got around to taking these photos, it was already 4am in the morning and we were all exhausted but also felt uber-elated and spiritually enlightened.

There were a number of reasons that made this trip so special, not only did it mark the start of Ramadan but also happened to be my mother’s birthday and coincidently, Eid fell on my father’s birthday, and we also celebrated Amna’s birthday there too on the 15th of April.

I flew my mother-in-law out to Saudi as a surprise for my wife for two weeks so she could spend part of Ramadan with us and spend some quality time with the grandkids. During our one month we also travelled to Madina, the second holiest site for Muslims and a obligation to visit as part of completing our Umrah.

There were many lessons we took away from our time in Saudi, the greatest being the opportunity to reflect on our inner selves and the chance to let go of all the negative feelings we were holding on to. It also gave us the chance to appreciate our relationships with each other. For me it was the chance to focus on my responsibilities and relationships as a husband, father and a son. It reaffirmed how truly blessed & humbled I am for everything we have as a family.

Btw, we’re already planning our next trip to Saudi as a family, but this time for Hajj (fingers crossed).