UPDATE part 2.

salaamu alaikum

thanks for the feedback, i made sure to exclude any and all such suggestions from my considerations. so after brief contemplation, i've decided to keep the hair for a little longer, that is the rest of ramadan (cuz the hair looks gangsta under a kufi and even more so under an imamah - i'm guessing though since i haven't tried that second one yet) and possibly the rest of this semester. reason? well, i kinda like my new nickname on the basketball court at school and other places and i want it to set in before i change my look.

i've only been called by this name twice however, once on the basketball court and once by a fellow muslim at a janazah i recently attended........

which reminds me, inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'oon. just this past friday, i got the news that a brother i've known for so many years passed away in a motorcycle crash, who we would play basketball with on the REGULAR, in fact i had just played basketball with him the VERY DAY before he got in the accident. and it was crazy how we would be chilling and talking and he would tell us how he loved his bike and how he could get from bmore to columbia in like 5 minutes flat and everyone would say, "one slip on that thing, and its over man." and we would laugh and just be like, "yeah. when you gotta go you gotta go." the janazah brought out so many old heads who i used to see back in the day when i was so young just chilling on the courts watching the older dudes play. and i met his father for the first time, and it was crazy how father and son both had that same smile. his father was smiling the entire time at the janazah, the burial, and every time he would greet somebody who came up to him and hugged him. and i heard a brother greet him before me and say exactly what i was thinking, that Saif was always smiling just like his father, and his dad was like, he's probably smiling right now.

may Allah reunite all of us in Jannatul Firdaus, ameen.