HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMMI

It is mother’s day; I am with her, in my car, the smell of the new car mixes with her special fragrance. When she applies any fragrance to her skin and clothes, something unique happens, it becomes her signature fragrance.
The trees are laden with the young green of lush spring, the darkness & abundance of leaf signaling summer has not yet taken over. There are signs for strawberry picking enroute, I make a mental note to come back and pick some strawberries, and with a mental smile I correct myself, I plan on buying them at the stand.
We are talking about nothing much, I am happy she is with me and I with her, we are in a cocoon, out of range for beeper and phone and heading towards the Lake. As we turn right onto the dirt road, time comes to a standstill and we are in a no mans time zone, just the two of us, and the Lake Lick Fork.
The serene lake beckons with a few ripples as its gentle water slops at the edges, of the grassy shore. The whirring of leaves as the breeze swishes through them and the crackle of twigs as we walk over them heading for the shelter are the only sounds on this cool spring evening.
The shelter stands at the end of the path as if waiting for us, silent in its vigil for this special time for me with her and her with me never to come again. We sit and look at the lake. As usual I am redundant in drawing her attention to how beautifully serene it is. She tolerates my remarks about the scene and its beauty. As I fall silent both of us hear the sounds from memory, of children playing, of spicy chicken and hamburgers sizzling, of women laughing and the canoes pushing out into the water. Sounds of the many picnics we have held here for the graduates and more recently for one special graduate who is her favorite, she does not mention what we both feel. The memories, glide on the wings of the breeze playing hide and seek with us.
She is clutching her composition book under her arm. After drinking tea and partaking of the snacks I had brought she says, “Well would you like to hear what I wrote?” Yes I reply and am all attention, and the tale begins……….from her great, great grandfather traveling to India from a neighboring country finding work as he travels wins a spouse in the upper circles of society, and so on. There are expressions of simplicity of life, braided with a sense of adventure, some tensions of the religious differences, some mention of the behaviorism of the then English masters, and their effect on the Indians of those times, overall the humble beginnings…of a family, our family.
I am intrigued, but not enthralled, we are nowhere near the juicy parts that I have heard from my Aunts, of the events in our family, this is far too early in the history of our family, and yet the preciseness of what she has written is a surprise, the eloquence of the Urdu language, her style of narration are all unique…………..I belong to a family that had materially humble beginnings, and ancestors who valued ethics more than their lives and the men were fluid like the breeze, they gave up security for the sake of adventure and travel.
My mind wanders; I am a little disappointed, ……….why? I wanted my family to be the intelligentsia they were now, but they were not. At least not the academic armchair type of intelligentsia, They were hard working, and adventurous folks who did not compromise their ethics for money, and yet were flexible, innovative and somewhere in their adventures was an element of innocence, and trust, an unwavering trust in Almighty God to set things right if things went wrong.
The sun has started to set and a cloud cover has come in. She hates a proverbial drop of water on her head, she closes her book and moves towards the car, and tiny droplets start to fall.
I want to linger, turn my face up to the sky and feel the rain on my face and my body, she is rushing to the car, trying to ward off the tiny droplets from falling on her head. What opposites we are in the realm of the sensuous. She hating the rain, I loving it. She my mother, I her daughter from the same gene pool and yet worlds apart.
Interrupted by the storm, that followed we travel back to home, with an unsaid promise that she would read more to me from her memoirs and that she would continue to write.
Never even for a moment do I dream that this brief spell at the lake would be her last reading of her memoirs, nor that the rest of her writing left in an apartment in Atlanta would be thrown out by unknown hands and would rest on a heap of garbage, unquestioned and unsolicited.
I attempt to pacify my sense of loss with the warnings in the Quran (paraphrased)“ One is not to follow ones ancestors, just because they are our ancestors, but only if they are rightly guided”. What of me? I ask myself, I have lost the last chance of ever knowing my ancestors and if they were rightly guided.
With her passing, and her memoirs decorating the garbage heap of the Apartment in Atlanta, the memory book of our past at least from our mother’s side is closed irrevocably.
“Inna lil lahi wa inna elaehi rajaeoon” We come from Allah and to Him we shall return
August 29, 2007

CHIVALRY WINS

The eight mile stretch of water separating North Africa from Spain is on the left side of the picture, the vague coast line with a cloud is North Africa, the picture is taken from Gibraltar (Jabl ut Tariq which is arabic for Rock of Tariq).

The story goes as follows (as per the Spanish guide during our visit to Andalusia 2004):

Roderigo the Visigoth king was a crude, cruel and uneducated man. He was very brutal to his own people. At an official function he saw the beautiful young daughter of the Governor of one of the Spanish Provinces, and wanted her.
However when her father asked her if she would consider marrying the king who already had several wives, she refused.

One night it is said that the young girl was taken by force and dishonored by Roderigo, and then discarded.

This enraged and grieved her father. The father who was a devout Christian and an influential man was friends with the Muslim chiefs of Northern Africa across the straits of Gibraltar. He appealed to the Muslim chiefs to ask for help from the Muslim Khalifa.

Muslims are taught to honor women as a commandment from the Quran. Thirteen times in the Quran people are given the limits (hudood) which are not to be crossed, regarding the honor and protection of women.
The muslims who held sway over a powerrful empire at that time were outraged at the helplessness of the father whose daughter had been dishonored and violated and who had no recourse for punishing the perpetrator.

Thus they sent TARIQ BIN ZIYAD with a small number of Muslim fighters to cross the eight miles of water that separates Southern Spain from Northern Africa and ……………the rest is History!

“I have burned my boats”
If you have heard the term ” I have burned my boats”, it comes from Tariq bin Ziyad’s first speech when he reached Spain (Gibraltar). . He ordered his army to “burn all their boats”, thus offering his soldiers only one option and that was……………. to go forward!

THE HOUSE, MY SANCTUARY

The fingers of grief……….I have always wondered why are they called the fingers of grief? I feel the delving motions of the fingers, how they can touch, feel and finger the heart for hurt, and sometimes pierce, poke and mash on an open wound. Sometimes squeeze a heart that is already full and bursting with grief. They can also twist the major life supply to the heart and block all nutrients whether spiritual or in the physical realm. The Fingers of grief are so strong and yet infinitely sensitive in their fine movements, they can search out the tender spots in the heart, pinpoint them and enter the heart without violating the self erected walls of defense against grief.

The fingers of grief are with me today. They have been capable of entering, feeling, turning over, pinching and squeezing the pain in my heart to a crescendo. They enter boldly without having given permission to do so by the doorkeepers of the heart. They successfully find the multitude of areas that ache and throb and with their swift deftness leave me with longing, regret and downright despondency.

I have been told that if you are unable to be at peace alone with yourself and feelings of despondency and loneliness overwhelm you, then perhaps you have a strong ugly nafs that is stifling the malaika (angelic/spiritual) part of your nafs. It is only in the privacy of being alone without distractions that you come face to face with your nafs. The degree of despondency and “wahshah” you feel when left to yourself is directly proportional to the ugliness of your nafs, showing you who you really are on the inside. In the battle of the nafs, if the nafs is strong, then wahshah is rampant. If the heart is strong and free of the nafs then when you are alone you are not with your nafs, you are with Allah surrounded by his compassion and love. Thus Mujahada is the only recourse, I am told, and yet when you are bleeding from every cell of your heart how do you do mujahada?

Even though the forty days of barakah from the Hajj are over, I have only one recourse; I close one window in my mind and open another from memory:
There is no past, no present and no future, you are on the second floor of the Haram, the gentle breeze, comes through and you know that someone has passed by. Is it an angel or my child who has swished by me and I feel the breeze from his movement…….. or is it the pristine movements of the angels performing Tawaf on the second floor? I look up and the chandelier is gently swaying, I look across the hallways, none of the others are moving.

I have been told that when the cover of the Kaaba flutters it is due to the circambulation of the angels. Today I think the angels have moved to the second floor, perhaps in search of khushu. It is too crowded on the ground floor. Here on the second floor your mind allows you to be alone with Him amongst many. People walking in tawaf alongside you recede into a mist leaving you alone with the house of the Lord, His angels and your prayers.

You want to really look at His house, but it feels like a violation of etiquette while doing tawaf, similar to staring at someone’s beautiful house when you are invited to visit, instead of conversing with them. Does my Lord want me to converse with him and not stare at His house? It is difficult; the House is mesmeric and magnetic and calls you.
I feel I have taken some soporific which instead of putting me to sleep, has created a mist around me, I am with my Lord, I am unable to see him, but I am keenly aware of Him, yet I also see the milling crowd around me. It is surreal, almost like participating in a silent movie.

Nevertheless, back on the musallah on the second floor I am reading “Accepted Whispers” and each word as I repeat it seems to have been written for me. Who wrote or spoke the Munajat e Maqbool, I am ignorant but the words are the poetic version of what I want to say to my Lord. I have an awareness He is listening to every word I say, sort of like your mother listens to your conversation while she is cooking or keeping an eye on your brother, yet you know instinctively that she is hearing every word and intonation of what you are saying as you relate the events of the day. I have His attention, I am reading the duas in Arabic, and they flow from my tongue as if I was a sage in Arabic. Some remote part of my brain registers that with surprise, I read the meaning, it is truly befitting, I am asking for the best for my children and my family, and I am asking for so much beneficence from Him unashamedly, without being conscious of the magnitude of what I am requesting. Yet I feel He is encouraging me with silent approval.

Beside me Shireen sits quietly reading the English Quran with the blue and white calligraphy on it, I look at her, her head is bent, her brow unfurrowed, her face peaceful, her attention engrossed in His words. Victoria plucks at my sleeve and points upwards; our chandelier is moving again, none others are. The angels are hovering around us. Are Imran, Ebad and Tariq with them? I cannot feel their presence, but there is an airiness of love, joy and contentment in my heart.

No physical needs interfere, the passage of the sun is an indication that asar has come and gone and maghrib is approaching, I cannot see the sun set, but I do see the red clouds on top of the hill, Maghrib comes and goes. Prayer is over. There is a sudden urge inside me; I want to see His house undisturbed and by myself. I get up and inch forward, murmuring my excuses to the people on the musallah as I step between them. I cross the stream of people performing tawaf, to get to the balustrade. A Malaysian man give me place besides him, he is crying, I look away… at the Kaaba. I am looking at His house and I have no words. I am staring unashamedly at His house, as it stands regally in all its splendor. Inside me I feel I am being bold, bordering on disrespect, yet I want to continue to stare, at the Kaaba, the House of My Lord!

The people milling around the Kaaba, seem like a symphony, moving to their own music and yet in a manner that seems beautifully choreographed from where I stand. I am satisfied to be at the balcony, no one bothers me, I look at the man who gave me the spot, he has gone, when and where I never registered. Someone else silently takes his place, I stay, there is no one pulling at my sleeve or edging around me to take my vantage point. I tell myself, I am not being selfish, I am just a pilgrim from a faraway land who has never seen the Lord’s house and I am crass enough to stare and don’t seem to get enough of it with my eyes.

I start walking again; will I be able to complete a Tawaf before isha? It really does not matter, everyone is walking with me, I am envious of no one and no one is envious of me. I fit in, blend into this mosaic of the ummah, another color, another form, of humanity. I am unconcerned with them and they with me. No one cares that I am a woman alone performing Tawaf, it is an exhilarating feeling, I am praying to my Lord and I don’t need an intermediary, a mahram, or an interpreter. Words flow out of me, I am choosing a new recipient for my prayers with every circle I complete: my children both dead and alive, My family members both dead and alive, my friends and community members both dead and alive, the prisoners, those in agony and those in waiting, the afflicted and those recovering, and some whose hearts have hardened, our girls, and our boys from our community. As I include Tariq, Imran and Ebad, I pause, why am I praying for them, I feel it to be redundant, they seem to be in the Tawaf, somewhere remote, either having completed their tawaf or almost going to, not with me, somewhere out of my reach, independent and on their own time, smiling, enjoying together, as they always did, having the time of their life in another dimension. I almost feel that when I finish I may hear Tariq turning from Imran and saying “Whatsup Mom”.

I am reaching the Hajr Aswad, as I raise my hand to say my greeting; my neighbor raises both his hands and kisses his fingers after pointing to the Hajr Aswad, should I be doing that too? I do it, it seems like if you cant kiss it physically, surely a flying kiss wont hurt, but mine is an after thought, his had the fervor of devotion, love and passion.

If only time could stand still. If I could be frozen in place sending my flying kiss to the Kaaba, or stand leaning at the rail, staring at the Kaaba, drinking it in with the eyes of my soul, as it stands a silent sentinel, host to the devout and the cynical alike.
I feel the hospitality of His house permeate me layer-by-layer, happiness floods my heart, life is good, I am hungry, and the Isha azaan calls. My visit today has been accepted with all its shortcomings.

I recall the words of a sage about his Hajj:” The first time I only saw the House…
The second time I saw the House and the Lord
The third time I saw the Lord…………..”
This is my first time. Will I get another time?

LOVE AND SOLACE IN THE PROPHET’S MOSQUE

First we went to Medina. There, on the third day, I met myself.
She was about my age. It was time for Asr, Shireen and I were walking towards the Masjid e Nabvi, Shireen wanted to pray in the courtyard as it was sunny and beautiful, I wanted to pray inside as we were going to stay till isha, and I knew it would be cool later towards the evening.

As we approached the entrance into the mosque, the Lady guard dressed in a flowing black abaya her hands sheathed with thin black gloves, her face hidden behind a black niqaab, her large dark eyes glinting, stopped me at the door and checked my backpack, and said “Camera!” and sent me packing with a slight push away from the entrance. I had forgotten to remove the camera from my backpack, even though due to my earlier experience (detailed elsewhere) I knew that cameras were forbidden at the Prophets mosque,

We turned around and sought a place in the mosque courtyard, which was rapidly filling up. I saw a Pakistani woman sitting on one of those three-legged stools with an empty space beside her. I asked her if I could pray there. She looked at me and I could feel the anger, the disgust and the reluctance in her eyes, and yet she said “yes” I sat down beside her and read my dua book while waiting for the adhan. She sat beside me and made no effort to talk, or connect or smile. I could feel the resentment emanate in layers from her. Finally, the adhan started.

The sweet sound of the Muezzin rolled out an invitation to pray in the Prophets mosque. I felt the love of our Prophet (Peace be upon him) enveloping me. And as the “Allah O Akbar” came from the muezzin, an answering adhan came from far away. I looked around and saw the mountains encircling the mosque.

It was surreal; The Mountains were echoing the muezzin’s word for word, along with all the Muslims. We felt safe, secure and loved in the courtyard of the Prophets mosque, after all he had walked here and prayed here, and his love, his compassion and his gentleness lingered on.

We prayed our sunnahs and soon the iqama was called and the fard prayer started. At its conclusion I sat back down in my place and tried to be polite with the lady next to me by asking where she was from and how long she had been in Medina. She looked at me and her eyes struck me as “weeraan” or devoid of hope and happiness, I guess desolate would be one translation of the word. The expression in those eyes was familiar I had seen it elsewhere, but I could not recall where.
She proceeded to tell me that she was supposed to come for Hajj last year but there were complications. She did not need much prompting, to talk even though the tone of her voice was a monotone and on occasion businesslike and detached. She recounted her story reluctantly. And as the story unfolded, I was speechless.

She had lost her 14-year-old son in a car accident last year (2005). He was survived by his sister who was two years older than him and was sitting on the other side of her mother and listening quietly.

This lady in addition to her son’s accident had developed severe back pain and had to operated upon and thus could not come for Hajj. It was for this reason that though she could pray on the floor, she could not sit on the floor for long periods of time.

Tears rolled down her cheeks as she recounted her story in silent desperation. The people and sounds around me receded, as I listened and felt her grief. Here was someone who had also lost her Tariq, and yet I could only feel her pain but provide no solace. The Prophets mosque, stood silent, the floor cool and comforting, the minarets silent and upright, all a witness to her pain and mine.

The sun slowly descended and the warmth of the early afternoon turned to the coolness of pre-maghrib. She repeatedly though hesitantly reminded me and seem to be reminding herself that she had lost her son. I told her that I also had lost my son last year in a car accident. She seemed to go on as if I had not said a word. She said again quietly that she had lost her son, and only God knew why.

Finally it seemed as if what I had said registered and she turned and looked at me and said:” how old was your son” I told her that he was nineteen. Her face remained desperate, she gave me her condolences, and I tried to give her mine. Two mothers fumbling with words and emotions to comfort each other where our Prophet had been comforted in the arms of the Ansar.

To my amazement the young girl sitting next to her mother turned to me and said “ Aunty we are all sent to this world for a finite time, and when our time is up Allah takes us back, Aunty if you make dua it will help you, as only God knows why and when things happen and we have to accept his “masheeat” as he is all knowing and all powerful”. I looked at her. She was a young innocent girl from Pakistan; she couldn’t have been a day older than sixteen. Words of solace came tumbling out of her mouth enveloping us in a blanket of comfort.

The good Lord was sending solace to two mothers in the courtyard of the Mosque of his beloved Prophet, the sun was setting the sky was red and purple, the adhaan for Maghrib was being called and being repeated by the mountains, the cloak of our beloved Prophet was being placed on the shoulders of two mothers and two sisters who were struggling with the loneliness of having lost the sunshine in their lives, their laughing lighthearted sons and brothers were gone.

She turned to me and said “you are very fortunate, it is going to be Hajj-e- Akbar” and I remembered where I had seen that “weeraan” (desolate) expression before ………it had been in the mirror.

HOW I WAS CALLED FOR HAJJ

Sometimes when you are asleep, you stumble into the garden and then when you wake up you have this vague lingering feeling that you glimpsed something beautiful. Before you can consolidate that thought your daily chores, of eating drinking working and cooking take over and all higher sensibilities are drowned in the acts of daily living. I have for a long time tried to recapture that glimpse to find my way into the garden but it has never materialized into reality. The feeling of wanting to go for Hajj has sort of been like that elusive feeling in my heart.

Seven years ago, my brother called me and said” would you like to go for Ummrah? I said “sure” he said, “This is your birthday gift from me.” My brother, like all researchers and academicians is always overextended. When the time drew very close, he asked me to send him my passport and visa application. By this time we had reached the “forbidden” times for Ummrah. These are the two months before Hajj. Major preparations take place during this period to welcome and accommodate the four million pilgrims that arrive from all over the globe.

I had envisioned Umrah to be like going to see the Vatican, another tourist visit even though I am a Muslim; the actual sanctity of the event had not sunk into me.
I was not ready emotionally, nor spiritually to visit the House of God with the appropriate humility and desire that a pilgrim who wishes to visit His house must have. There was not enough time for my visa to come through. And I could not go.
My next attempt at Umrah was looking through the travel agencies online and thinking of planning something in the summer for the family. This remained an online surfing exercise, but the plans never really materialized.

Having grown up in a very educated, westernized liberal family, my concept of Umrah was that it was for people who were very religious. I believed like many others from Pakistan that Hajj was reserved for the very old and feeble who had finished all their worldly responsibilities and were going on their final journey to wash out their sins. It was much later that I was to find out how mistaken I was. This gives you an idea where I was coming from and why it took me seven years to perform Hajj.

The mind of a child is an electronic camera, it takes pictures and stores them and then on strange occasions and times sometimes many years later a picture pops up.

Back in time, I am seven years old and am accompanying my mother to the harbor in Karachi, the sea breeze is cooling my brow and I can smell the faint perfume of jasmine from my mothers dupatta mixed with the petroleum smells of the harbor. Other relatives are at the harbor, milling around with the crowd of people leaving for Hajj.
My great Aunt (Khalaji) is leaving for Hajj, she is being garlanded and her son dressed in two pieces of white cloth with part of his arms and legs showing is standing beside her. I feel awkward. I had never seen my uncle with so few clothes on, and such strange ones. In our extended family I sense a feeling of finality. A feeling of reverence mixed with a feeling of a final goodbye.

We are waiting; I feel someone or something has come behind me. I turn around I see this huge ship “Safina Hujjajj “ written on it side standing behind me. It seems endlessly huge and has silently snuck up on me.
I am overwhelmed by its size, and a little afraid as it towers over me. I look up and away from the milling crowd at the harbor and I see what seems to me thousands of young boys who seem to be the age of my eldest brother, around sixteen or seventeen. They look oriental and they are all dressed in the white clothes that my uncle was wearing, their faces………I can never forget! The peace, the quiet happiness, the joy of anticipation, the serenity and sense of purpose. These young men, are all going to Hajj at the turn of their eighteenth birthday to fulfill the rites of their passage to manhood. They were all from Indonesia.

It took me fifty years of wandering, traveling through twenty four countries, teaching medicine before I thought that I could to go to visit the House of my Lord. It was a compartment of my life that had been private. Living two lives sometimes it shrank significantly during fulfilling my duties towards work and family,

Interning as a resident I came across a physician colleague who later became my mentor. He would always say on rounds, “Asma keep your priorities straight: The most important are: God, family and work, in that order. He worked long hours but he never missed church and never preached unless asked. My priorities had always been other people’s crises, medical or other wise.

In the Quran, God the Almighty says “ I am closer to you than even your jugular vein” I thus felt that I did not really need to take time out to be with him as He was with me always. What I did not know that there was a difference between Him being with me always and me being with Him always. Similar to having an elder with you at all times but your attention may not be on what He is saying to you.

I am propelled into the now, three years ago:
It is mother’s day and I am in Atlanta, for a conference, I convince my mother to go out for mothers day and go to pick her up my from my brothers apartment. I have not seen her in three years, due to extenuating circumstances. On the phone she sounds fine, but in her last phone call there is panic in her voice, her vision is failing with glaucoma and cataracts, she fears she is going blind and nothing can be done.
I wait for her to come down the stairs, and I am shocked that she cannot walk by herself; she is holding on to the railing and is looking around for me. The searching gaze of an almost blind person. It was as if someone had taken a boxing glove and hit me in my solar plexus. My beautiful, fastidious mother, looking around helplessly, unable to walk, and see. Rage battled with good manners and I gently guide her to the car. She was embarrassed but vague like someone who comes out of the darkness into sunshine and is unable to orient oneself. We go to a Turkish restaurant and she again has trouble seeing and walking and has to use the bathroom, and needs assistance but does not want us to help her.

I remembered God, I remembered mortality, I remembered the verse I had read in the Quran about parents taking care of us as children when we were helpless and that one day they would be helpless and we as children should take care of them without even making the sound of “oof” or showing displeasure.

From that time on came a period of three years where despite the best medical treatment in the world, my mother slipped into helplessness, and mental anguish as her children fought with each other and with everyone around them and returned to being little unruly children who did not like what was happening to their mama. Since they could not control the chain of events or stop them they ranted and railed at everyone round them.

I had to go back to the Quran and read and reread the commandments of taking care of your parents, without complaining. It did not say what the tribulations would be, they were not just physical but emotional and spiritual, we were not all on the same plane, as a family we ranged in our spiritual beliefs and our secular knowledge and in our arrogance of how much of fate we could change with medications and therapy.

I was slowly coming to my knees and I was praying. God who was next to my jugular vein was now on my lips as my constant companion. I could no longer control or direct the events that were happening, and yet I had not completely given up the feeling that I had control.

The next phase was when all was said and done and was of no avail, she was neither alive, nor dead, but in pain. I had to go back again and read the sections in the Quran on “sabr” which is translated into patience but it really is a submission to God with the premise that He knows best why things are happening and that we have to trust Him that eventually we will perhaps know His wisdom, but maybe not.
I made my peace and accepted that God knew best and that I would continue to do my best, knowing that I do not have the power to change things nor the wisdom to direct them.
What lies on the other side of the wall which our loved ones pass through at death I am unable to see and understand and I have to believe Him and accept His decisions and hope and pray that at some time He will share the reason for the circumstances with me. At this time, I must find comfort in Patience and Prayer, as is commanded in His word in the Quran many times.

Three days before my birthday in the quiet late afternoon, my dear mother moved to the other side of the curtain, leaving us all behind. Inaccessible to us anymore.

At that juncture I thought to myself, I have faced the worst that I could have, There is nothing worse that could happen to me, and yet On a rainy afternoon on July 13, 2005 their was a knock on the door and two police officers were standing there and wanted to see me. They asked me to sit down. And when they said that once again my electronic memory kicked in:

I am in the ICU, a child who came in with head trauma is brain dead, I have to tell the parents, I go to the waiting room, they look at me, their eyes innocent of the horror they are going to face and I ask them to sit down.

Allah is truly Merciful, even as they told me that Tariq my dear nineteen year old son was “deceased”, with some part of my brain I thought maybe it is a mistake, I can go take care of him, maybe this small county of Taliaferro does not have the medical resources to take care of trauma, he probably is alive, My mind is numb, I am thinking, again and again this is just an error, in a minute they are going to look at their report and say “sorry wrong patient”.

It doesn’t happen, three months after my mother passed over to the other side, her dearest grandson joined her, leaving a deafening silence in my heart.

I wanted God to comfort me because no human being could do it. I wanted Him to envelope me in His mercy, and His love. How was I going to do that?

I needed Him, I knew from the innermost core of my heart that no one could give me the comfort that He could, His name Raheem comes from rahem, which means “womb”. He knew that my womb had been torn apart, my child had been taken, and every cell in my body was weeping, that I needed him! not as a silent sentinel closer to my jugular vein but as a dynamic force in my life and in my heart. He knew what I did not. I needed Him, I wanted him and to seek Him I must go to Him.
I knew then that I must go to His House to partake of His hospitality, to unashamedly ask for His love and Mercy and ask Him to hold me and bring me close to Him (Subhana wa Ta’ala).

Thus began my journey to Hajj long before I actually performed the actual rites of pilgrimage.

A 1953 picture of Safinna Hujjaj:

"Verily with every difficulty there is relief"

I am the only sister among five brothers, though one of them has left us to join the people of the grave. My introduction to pain and its resulting effect was quite early in life at a time where most people claim that children do not have memory of events.

I can see myself as clear as watching a rerun of a home movie. I am in Malir Cantt we are living in a low lying single story Bungalow, One of the windows is covered with the cascading purple flowers of bougain villea, In front of the house is a low two brick wall, which my brothers, their friends and I use primarily as a boundary for cricket, or I use to sit with my girlfriends and watch my brother when I am not playing with them.

Behind the house is a shed, which I think is used as a covered car-parking garage. In the afternoons while my father is away in his car this empty shed with a concrete floor, cool to our bare feet, with a roof to shade us from the relentless afternoon sun is used as a base for playing cowboys and Indians. This base is a safe haven where you cannot kill anyone from the other side. However once you leave the base you are a free target.

Here my memory becomes vague in geography. Somewhere behind the house is the desert with its pure white sand, cactuses and according to my mothers opinion a no mans land, i.e. it is an unspoken instruction that we are not to venture there. Though there is no clear command from my mother but there is a feeling that it is strictly off limits for unknown reasons.
Looking out back and beyond our house, there are the abandoned half built foundations of a house. The shrubbery has grown near it, as it has been uninhabited for a while. It is an intriguing place for my brothers, a no mans land, so much like the wild west, desert sand, and shrubbery, half built foundation, where you would be safe from the thorns, snakes and scorpions of the desert that hide beneath it.

There is a superstition floating around, I think being encouraged by our elderly servant that when the foundations of a new house are being laid, if the owners have not given ”sadaqa” i.e. charity then blood is drawn from the people who frequent it. We are thus forbidden to play on the foundations of the house that are being built behind our house. My brothers who have no respect for superstitions and who excel in pushing the envelope, scoff at this concept and I tacitly agree without really understanding the pros and cons.

One evening when my parents are away, my brothers are released from school like a Mongol horde into the back yard they all head with friends towards the unfinished foundations of the abandoned house, and I with them. They are my buffer & protection from the wrath of my parents.
On reaching the foundation, I find it intriguing It is a concrete maze, you can run on its flat top walls, but at times these are interrupted in continuity so one has to either jump to the next foundation wall, or get down to the ground and go to the next one. However as I understand the rules of the game, if you get down on to the sand and are no longer on the concrete you are “out” of the game.

I am playing at the foundation and I at age three am able to jump all the ones that need to be jumped. Landing on the rough gravely surface of the cement of the foundation makes my feet slightly sore. I register with a sixth sense that the sun is going down, and the red in the sky is apparent, slight twinges of alarm enter my heart as my mother has always stressed to my brothers and me to always be home before maghrib, I stop and look. They are all playing without missing a beat. I feel satisfied, and at this moment, I come to a halt behind one of my brothers he takes a flying leap and lands on the other cement wall across from the one he was on, I without hesitation follow. However as I jump, I do not account for my short legs and do not land on the other side of the foundation but on the sandy desert floor, I climb right back on the foundation, but not before I feel something prick my foot, like a fine needle, I ignore it.

Seconds later the most excruciating pain that I can ever remember starts from my foot with a progressive increasing intensity and starts to climb into my body, I think I am screaming because I see our elderly servant running towards me and lifts me up. He is running to the house yelling for my father, who has returned from the office, an dso has my mother. Out of the corner of my eye and with the third intellect, I register that one of my brother is hitting hard on something near where I had jumped off the foundation..

My father comes running, takes one look at me and I remember the ensuing pallor & worry on his face as I had never seen before. The pain in my body has now transcended the external flesh and seems to be coming in waves, shocks, of pain deep inside me, I think I am crying, my father takes me in his arms. We are at the back gate of our house and as he rushes into the house someone say “ it was a bicchoo” My pain crazed brain registers that with a red alarm, I have been bitten by a scorpion from the desert that were well known for their fatal poison. The expression on my fathers face reflects that. Perhaps I am going to die. At that moment the pain is so intense and climbing that death would be a relief.

What happens next is Allah’s promise. My father gives me something, something that dulls the pain, I can see his concerned expression in his eyes mixed with the doctor’s assessing look, I am still breathless with pain, and he gives me something else, I am beyond sobs, and I fall into a cascade of oblivion soothed. My last memory is of his concerned face. How he treated my foot I have no memory, I do know that whatever he gave me, frayed the edges of the intensity of the pain and it dissolves into a mist. As the mist thickens it engulfs me. I fall into a dreamless, unconsciousness. On awakening my pain is gone as if nothing had ever happened.

Two subconscious affirmations are embedded in my brain from that day on:
One that with severe pain there comes relief, and second that my father could take care of all illnesses no matter how severe.

Many years later in an attempt to find and assuage my pain of a more emotional nature I came upon Allah’s promise in the Quran: ” With every difficulty, comes relief, with every difficulty comes relief”** repeated twice in the same verse in case my pain crazed brain or my pain filled heart might miss the significance of the promise the first time.

**Surah Inshirah:5-6
August 16. 2007