What It Means - Day 363

OK, here's one of those odd days - and I'm running out of days on this year-long quest - wherein I don't start off with a passage from the Quran of the ahadith. And, no, I don't think the image, per se, is What It Means; that is, I suppose that I am a true Muslim at heart, in that I err more on the iconoclastic side of things. Nevertheless, I'll go ahead and post this image nonetheless. I picked this up in Agra on the recent India trip. We were dragged to one of the local shops, where, we were told, the descendants of the actual craftsmen who built the Taj Mahal still worked. Now, I had told the students before hand that along the way, at least once but probably more than that, our guides would miraculously suddenly remember that they knew of a place where we could go, that was worked by the actual descendants yadda yadda yadda. I'm not opposed to it, obviously because we all need to make a living, and I know that a certain percentage of the sale gets kicked back to the tour guide (so that if you like your guide you're essentially just tipping her/him) although the theatrics of the sudden remembrance is often pretty clumsy. I had told the students what to expect at the beginning so several of them had to try and hide their smiles. Nevertheless, I did go ahead and buy this one piece, which was marble with inlaid malachite - or at least something like marble with something like inlaid malachite (actually, I think it's a little bit of both, although probably of lesser quality of both, which is also fine).

Even if you don't know a lot of Arabic (and my own understanding of Arabic, shameful to admit, is brutish) you might recognize the word Allah. I had been wanting something with Allah's name on it, so this seemed like perfect opportunity to splurge and get myself something, which I don't often do.