It’s been a year since we moved to Asakusa. A year since hubby accepted ICOJ’s offer for him to be the Imam of Dar Al Arqam Mosque.
When I look back – it seems that there’s not much differences since he came. The mosque is as quiet as ever, with little congregation on any other day save for Friday. Yet, in this past year, he has led several conversion, nikah and jenazah ceremonies. He had entertained a few requests from 5-star hotels wanting to buy praying mats and compasses as well as borrowed some Quran for their customers. He too had led several discussions on Islam with some police officers, intelligence officials from Japanese Ministry of Justice as well as entertained some questions on Islam posed by some reporters.
The police officers visit stemmed from hubby being stopped by a police officer. It’s rather common here for police officers to stop ‘aliens’ and ask for identification. Hubby had forgotten to take his “alien card” with him several times during these random inspection, but one time he purposely delayed showing his alien card until he reached the police station. The police on duty, who could not interrogate him much about hubby’s identification once he was showed the alien card, then began to make small talk about the mosque and Muslims in general. Hubby invited the police officer and his friends to come to the mosque to have lengthier discussion. That policeman did not show up but the offer was taken up by some other officers – two young detectives and a middle aged detective whose eldest daughter is my age. They came here for an introductory session on Islam, as hubby taught them some basics as well as answered some of their questions. They promised to come again, at least to return the books they borrowed, if not for another lesson.
Two intelligence officers from Ministry of Justice appeared one day; the senior one rather fluent in English while the quieter younger one has some knowledge in Arabic. They came to have a ‘routine’ inspection to ensure that there is no terrorist-related activity going on in the area. Hubby assured them that he would report it himself if he knows of any terrorist-related activities going on. He also introduced the senior officer to other ICOJ’s committee members, to prove that we have nothing to hide albeit not knowing too many details on the history of ICOJ ourselves. The senior officer visited us again after that, with two bagful of fruits as omiyage, to thank us for introducing him to the ICOJ committee member. But we had a feeling that it wouldn’t be the last time for us to see him yet, not when his parting words were “I’ll keep in touch with you…”
To my knowledge, this mosque had been visited by reporters twice since last year – one was by a reporter who saw the mosque’s minaret and stopped by because he was intrigued by such unusual scene in Tokyo. He used to study Arabic in Egypt and was shocked to discover that there are a lot of mosques – though does not appear like the ones he saw in Egypt – in Tokyo and surrounding areas. No, we never appeared in any newspaper the guy was not taking down any note or anything – it was just by chance that he saw the mosque and he stopped for a chat with the Imam, that’s all.
The other reporter was from TV Tokyo, assessing the possibility of making this mosque the subject for one program which is aired on Sunday evenings. After meeting Brother Ehsan, the ‘orang kuat’ for this mosque, he knew that it would be difficult to gather people here for the purpose of ‘acting’ in that documentary he had in mind.
Oh, and then there’s uncle Abe – the middle aged ojisan who first appeared in Ramadhan last year, telling us that he would like to learn more about Islam. There had been several subsequent visits – but he has yet to convert. Everytime he came though, he would ask for some amount of money – which he claimed he needed for electricity bills, for water bills, for rental, even for passport-sized photographs (we ask for 2 passport-sized photo for New Muslim certificate purpose). We never gave as much as he asked for - ranging from 10,000 yen to 2,000 yen, instead we gave a lot less (from 2,000 yen to 500 yen), and it’s been a few months since he last came here. Honestly, we doubt that we would see him again…
Then, there were several musafirs who came here for a short period of time, including Malaysians. Last March for an instance, there was a family from Penang who slept here for three nights. Their son was about to graduate in Kyoto, so when they came to Tokyo, they decided to stay in the mosque since the son could not find friends who could accommodate five adults simultaneously. Last April, we were visited by a group of retired teachers from Perak who stopped by at the mosque just before they visited Asakusa’s famous sightseeing spots – Nakamise and Kaminarimon. In both cases the visitors were surprised to learn that the Imam is a Malaysian, especially so upon learning that the Imam does not know much nihongo. By the way, another Malaysian is currently holding the post of Imam in another mosque – the new Yokohama mosque. There are a lot of Malaysians working in Yokohama, since Petronas has an office there, so the new Imam might had been brought here by some Petronas officer.
The past one year had been rather uneventful in terms of people coming to the mosque. On the other hand, we had dealt with lots of problems regarding the building itself. The thing is, when hubby was appointed, he never got any real training in terms of clerical and administrative jobs. He was asked to fax and post certain bills elsewhere, so that he doesn’t have to do the payment himself. But there had been occasions when we had the phone service and the gas supply cut, and he was blamed for not sending the bills to some committee member, although the truth is he did as per instructed every time a bill arrives.
There had been two incidents regarding the water pump – once in Ramadhan and later earlier this year. These, if you ask me, were accidents waiting to happen, because apparently there had been water related problems for ages in the mosque, but it was only recently when the water pumps were finally changed.
Then, there was the time when a piece of the mosque’s aged signboard fell down on the road. We were visited by the police a few minutes after that, as they wanted to see that the whole signboard got to be taken down so as to ensure no other piece would fell down unexpectedly and injure any passerby. Again, Brother Ehsan was called to the rescue.
And of course, there were the times when hubby decided to get rid of two truckfuls of unburnable garbage, kept for God knows how long in the first floor. You would be amazed at the amount of garbage the previous Imams/ ICOJ people had kept in the first floor. Unusable PCs, old refrigerator, other damaged electrical goods, damaged furniture, all sort of wires and tubes, wood planks and steel pipes, mismatched plastic food containers, et cetera. Two loads of one-ton truck, I kid you not. Some of the garbage were even located at the top floor of the mosque. And prior to that, he had gotten rid of some garbage weekly. We never knew who asked for that ojisan to come and collect the unburnable garbage; he claimed that one Pakistan or Indian guy in Nishi Kasai area had advised him to come and collect some unburnable garbage in the mosque. He agreed to dispose the PCs for no charge, but charged us 12,000 yen to dispose the rest of the garbage. It was actually a bargain, considering the City Hall would charge us 10,000 yen just to get rid of one refrigerator.
It’s been a year – not short nor quite long, not that memorable nor easily forgettable – and I wonder what is waiting in store for us in the near future…
