Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Islamic Book Fair

On Friday, May 15, 2010 I went to Landmark building at Braga street Bandung. The pretty big and hilarious expo was held there. There were ample books and other stuffs we could grab. The thing that somewhat unusual for me was that the presence of hand phone booth. The fair was actually a book fair, but why did the electronic stuff such as cell phone exist? Actually the boot sold two kinds of cellular phones (for some reasons I cannot mention the brand) which more or less are appropriate to be called Islamic phones as they have Islamic contents bundled with them. The contents are Al Quran, hadith, muratal, adzan and so on. We can get all those software for at no cost – giveaway. I don’t know exactly the price as well as the complete feature of these phones as I just took a glance look at the booth. Curious about these phones? They are worth it to own.

At first, I didn’t actually want to go to the fair as I didn’t make any plan to buy any book within this month. It was just a friend of mine who urged me to go there. He told me that there was a big sale for most of the books sold. Besides, that day was the last day of the fair. These two things became my motivation to head off and get the book I wanted to own. I just then suddenly decided by myself that I needed to buy it there.

The thing I eagerly wanted to buy was that Sirah Nabawiyah book - the book of Prophet Muhammad’s story from his birth until his decease. That friend told me by a text that the price was just IDR 60.000 (around $ 7). Compared to the regular price, it was definitely a lot cheaper as I had to grope in to my pocket for IDR 300.000 (around $33) if I bought it not in the book fair. This book was written by Muhammad Ridha, an incredible Egyptian who dedicated himself to find and collect scattered stories or manuscripts of Propthet Muhammad (pbuh) from hadith, books and other trusteed as well as verified sources. Muhammad Ridho spent many years to write this 950 pages book so that I am pretty much sure that this book is really apt for me to learn and know more about our Prophet. It had been quite a while I wanted to buy sirah book as I was sure I knew nothing about my Prophet but a little, a very little. Hope I can get much knowledge then.

Back to the book fair, the situation inside the Landmark building was quite noisy as many people came there. Several sounds sounded by either persons or audio device from each booth, urging people take a look and buy. As I had already intention to buy the book I wanted, I just directly search for sirah nabawiyah as I mentioned above. Thanks God I didn’t find any difficulty to find it, the stock was actually not really plenty so I was somewhat worried if no one left. Aside from buying this book, I also bought 1 kilogram honey for a friend of mine. It was IRD 60.000 and kept in a small plastic gallon.

After buying those two things I thought I had better not go home right away. Instead, I did sightseeing and subsequently was interested in watching the talk show held by the committee of the book fair. In this talk show I there were two speakers presented, a colonel, retired armed service officer and an ustadz (Islamic preacher) from Hizbut Tahir Indonesia (HTI). They discussed about HTI’s stance of rejecting Obama from coming to Indonesia. As planned, Obama, the US president are going to come to Indonesia in June or July. I got many insights ‘bout this thing, won’t share them here though.

Hm….I was quite happy that day, quite satisfied too as I bring home the book I pretty much wanted. But one thing I’d like to share with you as the dessert is that, I barely could find comfort to pray inside the building. I mean the praying room of Landmark building is not really appropriate, especially the wudlu place (ablution). It’s just not really apt for the building as big as Landmark to have small, dirty and noisy praying room (not a room, it’s a veranda at the second floor anyway). So I think the management has to start thinking about improving praying room as well as ablution facility as many of the comers are Muslims. It’s not just Islamic book fair usually held there, but also computer fair. No reason for not improving it….


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

copied, for i like to read the rythm of your words! ^^