MAFAZ NAJMUDDEEN
When I locked the door of my home in Wahanga, Udunuwara, in early 2022, I carried a
suitcase packed for nine days. I was travelling to Makkah for Umrah, a pilgrimage I had
made before, a journey I thought I understood. I returned home nine months later, having
lived across five countries, stood inside the roar of a FIFA World Cup, and gathered enough
stories to fill a book. That book, Makkah to FIFA is now available to readers around the
world on Amazon and on Friday, 24 July, it will be formally launched at the Lotus Tower
in Colombo.
But this article is not really about a book. It is about what happens when a Sri Lankan steps
into the wider world carrying his whole identity with him and discovers that the world makes
room.
Rooted in Kandy, Raised by Two Traditions
I am a son of the Kandyan hills. My family’s roots run through Udunuwara and connect to
the old heritage in which Sinhala honorifics and Muslim faith have coexisted for generations,
as they have for so many Kandyan Muslim families. It is a heritage that taught me, long
before I ever boarded a plane, that identity is not a wall. It is a bridge.
My education carried that lesson forward: from Arafa Muslim School to St. Anthony’s
College, Kandy; then to the International Islamic University Malaysia; and finally to Darul
Uloom Zakariyya in South Africa, where I completed my Islamic scholarship. Today I serve
as Vice President of a regional branch of the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama, and I work as a
speaker, counselor, and entrepreneur. Every one of those roles, I have come to realise, is the
same job described differently: helping people understand one another.
Nine Days That Refused to End
The journey at the centre of the book began with no grand plan. An Umrah visit to Saudi
Arabia opened a door, and one door opened another — Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab
Emirates. Friends appeared where I expected strangers. Invitations arrived where I expected
farewells. What was scheduled as nine days grew, organically and almost against my will,
into nine months.
Along the way I saw the Gulf not as a tourist and not as a migrant worker — the two lenses
through which Sri Lankans most often view that region, but as a guest, a student, and
eventually a friend. I sat in majlis gatherings and listened. I watched how Gulf societies
balance breathtaking modernity with deep tradition. I made friendships that tested me.
( The book is tobe launched at 7 pm on Friday, July 24 at the Lotus Tower in Colombo.)
