Everyday I am, to tell the least of it, forced to feel piercing pains in my heart. Sometimes, it’s a bomb-blast. Sometimes, it’s a massacre of tens of thousands of innocents. Sometimes, it’s the longing that things would settle. Peace would come. Obliteration of respect, bodies, love and compassion would itself be annihilated. Sometimes, it’s something terribly awful, disgusting and soul-impaling that I read or hear about a prophet, or about God. Sometimes, it’s oppression, violence or indescribable hatred – wrongness and injustice that injustice and wrongness themselves fear. Sometimes, it’s the horrible condition of those poor souls, bereft of all joy, suffering through leprosy or diseases of inexplicable gravity, forced to beg others for their survival, compelled to sell whatever of character and personality they have, obliged to suffer, to surrender, to die, to leave all their innocent ambitions – whether it be a tiny wish of a leper-child to play with other children. Everyday, I pray to God to end this or I pray to Him when I’m worried that I did not think about all this and wasn’t worried and sad on all those bewailing parables on a particular day.
But truly, Allah is what He is. The First. The Last. The Evident. The Endless. The Hidden. The Manifest. Unfathomable. Incomprehensible. The Lord. The Master. The Ever Relenting. The Lord of Mercy. The Giver of it.
It’s a matter of just one sip. Just one sip. A sip of hot milk with honey in it. A sip that makes me realize the Love and Compassion of God. One sip down the throat; and the calmest surge of gratitude silently and subtly tip-toes inside me. A desire that may everyone taste of His bounty. After all this, He has blessed me. When my eyes burn by a cruelly, friendly fever, He has given me His hand to hold on to. The most trustworthy handhold available for all, for the righteous, for the oppressed, for the orphans, for widows. Hope. Hope that He is right here. Thankfulness. A lovely fear. A hope. Thankfulness. Thankfulness because I know that He hears. He listens. He answers. He gives. He provides. Because I know that the wronged can narrate all their sorrowful stories to Him. Because I know that when a young woman completely orphaned in childhood now loses her husband – her only supporter – decides not to opt for her sale and instead to cry, sob and sniffle in front of Allah, He listens. He hears. He answers. He provides. For He is the Prevailing. The Encompassing. Allah. The One. The Guide.
‘In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful!’ – The Qur’an.
