Ahmad Zuwail

Reading takes you to a world where only your imagination controls how you visualize what you read. Each person sees the words from a different perspective. The last book that really influenced me was Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. The way he wrote a novel mixed with laws of science and particle physics made me fall in love with reading again, after years of leaving my books on shelves. Since then, I started reading different types of books. The book in my hand now is "The Era of Knowledge", an Arabic book by the Nobel prize winner Ahmad Zuwail, who is as far as I know currently a professor of chemistry and physics at Caltech (teaching my favorite subjects at my top-choice college!).



When I started reading, I felt that the person I'm reading about is me, in a different setting and holding a different nationality. The curiosity and the way Ahmad Zuwail used to think in his early age resembles how I used to think. The subjects he likes are as same as mine. The way his parents brought him up with the belief that Islam is a reason to thrive in knowledge and science rather than to leave books for worship is the same way I was brought up. In Islam, anything good done with the intention of pleasing God is considered a form of worship. What fascinates me about that leader is that his leadership and uniqueness was apparent since he was young.

What really touched me is that when Dr. Ahmad climbed his first steps in Alexandria University he wondered if he can really be one of those great scientists that brought something new to the world. He read about successful brilliant contributors to science and scientists thinking that the only way to be a great scientist is to read and know about others and follow their trail.

I wonder, if I read about you Dr. Zuwail, and if I read more about Newton, Einstein, Faraday, and all those great idols, will I ever be one? You and I wondered about the same thing, but you're already there, and I'm not. You are living my dream. I am connected to this book and I hope that as long as my past is written in this book, my future is also going to follow the same path that the book talks about.

I don't care about getting into Caltech as much as I care about being good enough to get into one of the best universities in the world and to succeed in it. I don't care about winning a Nobel prize as much as I care about making contributions and achievements worth winning one. I don't care about others writing books about me as much as I care about having an influence on them. I do want to achieve what I mentioned but for a meaning beyond just simply "achieving those goals," but I'm aiming at what they symbolize and what they stand for.

I'm still at the beginning of the book, and the start of my life. What is about to happen is already written for me, and I pray God that what he wrote for me is better than what's written in "The Era of Knowledge."