Bosnia Journey 2026 — Day 8

Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Rahim

I awoke for the Fajr prayer at a quarter past four, and at that hour a strange feeling overcame me, in which activity was mixed with fatigue, and wakefulness with longing for rest. When I had performed the prayer I found no way to sleep, and I did not wish to force my soul to what it refused, so I sat at my desk reviewing some work and turning my attention to letters and notes that had accumulated during the days of the journey. The hours passed in quiet stillness, and only a faint sound coming from a distance, or a passing movement in the hotel corridors, would break the silence.

When seven o'clock approached, I went down to take leave of my companion Dr Omar Khan, who had come from California. We had been united in these days by good companionship and continuous conversation in knowledge, da'wah, and the conditions of Muslims in East and West. How many thoughts the farewell awakens in the soul! For a person does not part from a companion whose company he has enjoyed without feeling a kind of emptiness within himself, as if a part of his days were departing with that traveller.

While I was in this self-conversation, my thoughts turned to a matter that has long occupied me — the matter of ideas that settle in people's minds and become, over the days, established beliefs that no one discusses. I reflected on how many statements first arise from an assumption or error or misunderstanding, then are passed on by tongues from generation to generation, until they become as if they were fixed truths. I recalled an old saying that has often come to my mind: the basis of most essays is ignorance, which then passes to the second generation as narration, and the third generation inherits it as doctrine. When ignorance has become a doctrine, rectifying it becomes one of the most difficult and arduous of tasks, because people can bear to be told they erred in an opinion, but they cannot bear to be told that what they have inherited as belief needs review or correction.

This is not particular to one nation or another, nor to one group or another, but is the matter of the human being wherever he is; for many of the illusions that govern the lives of peoples arose from an old ignorance, then donned the robe of sanctity with the passage of time. Hence the task of intellectual reform is one of the heaviest and most arduous of tasks, because it does not face error alone, but faces familiarity and habit and the psychological inheritance to which groups and individuals cling.

Then I went to the restaurant, where I met my family and daughters at the breakfast table. In that morning gathering there was something of a quiet joy that precedes parting. The faces were smiling, the conversation was gentle, but deep within everyone there was a hidden feeling that the days of the journey were about to end, and that each would soon return to his usual life and daily work.

After that I returned to the room, gathered my books and papers, prepared my bags, and took a last look at the place where I had stayed for a few days. I do not know why a person becomes attached to places, even if his time in them is short, then finds in leaving them a kind of gentle sadness. Perhaps the secret is that a place preserves something of the memories lived in it, so that when we leave it, we leave behind a part of those memories.

After half past seven I went down, ready to go to the airport. At about eight o'clock we boarded the bus that was carrying about fifty-five of the journey's companions. It moved off quietly towards the nearby airport, since the hotel where we had stayed was only a few minutes away. The roads were still keeping the quiet of the morning, as if the city had not yet fully awoken.

At the airport the wait was longer than we had expected. The procedures took a long time, as is usual in the airports of this age whose restrictions have increased and whose checks have multiplied. After I had finished everything connected with travel, I returned to some of my work and readings, making use of the time as best I could.

Then we boarded the plane at eleven o'clock, but the plane was a little late in taking off. How much the traveller learns of patience! Travel is a chain of successive waitings — waiting for the bus, waiting for the plane, waiting for the bags, waiting to arrive. If only a person were to make good use of these moments, he would realise that the waiting itself is part of the journey, no less important than the movement.

At last the plane took off, and Bosnia began to recede little by little from our eyes. From the window I could see the mountains and the valleys and the small villages retreating until they all disappeared beneath the clouds. Then I began to call to mind the scenes of the past days: the meetings of the brothers, the gatherings of knowledge, the conversations of da'wah, the visits to the cities and the mosques, the kind faces that honoured us and treated us well. This journey was short in the number of its days, but rich in the meanings and memories it carried.

We landed at Luton Airport at half past one in the afternoon, but the return journey was not yet over, for the arrival of the bags took a long time, and we waited until past three o'clock before we were able to board the car heading to Oxford.

Translation note: This article was translated by AI. View the original Telegram post.