Bismihi Ta’ala
Mohsina Part 123
There’s an old saying which teaches: “A vessel can only pour out from what it contains.”
And it’s true what they say. It’s true that there are some people who are blessed with goodness and positivity. There’s this glow that kind of comes out of them, maybe just naturally, or probably because they have trained hard to be optimistic and not just because they have been blessed to be full of love and light.
Then there is the other extreme. The one who is constantly questioning everything around them, feeling victimised and angry at the world. Every experience shapes you to be who you are, but what you can control is how you action yourself thereafter. It just seemed like lately, I couldn’t control much of myself at all. Something was going on… my vessel was seemingly empty… and I didn’t quite know how to fill it again.
I looked at Jameela, my eyes a little unfocused as I watched her place Zaynah into the cot. She was one of those people. Always full of hope and laughter, and sometimes I wondered how she did it.
”That was a tad bit weird,” my sister murmured as she placed Zaynah in the cot, and anyone could tell that it was the understatement of the year. Hamzah’s behaviour wasn’t just weird. It was ridiculously rude.
Zaynah was fast asleep and for the first time I wished that she had taken longer to doze off so that Jameela hadn’t come in at that particular moment and disturbed the overdue exchange that was going on between Hamzah and I. I was frustrated and confused and looking for someone to blame.
Yes… it was because of everything that had happened with Hamzah but it showed how messed up my brain was when I was looking to point fingers at a one month old baby. Like she even knew what she was doing.
But at that point… I was spent. Broken and hurt and ready to throw myself and everyone else under a bus for just a glimpse of that love that Hamzah was had for me. My vessel was filled with negativity.
I immediately went to the window and watched him and Imraan get into the car. Zaid was with them, and I watched as Imraan strapped him into the car seat before they drove off.
Zaid had become like a nomad between the families. It had come to a point where I didn’t even need to pack a bag for him. Saaliha kept enough stocks of nappies and between her and my mother-in-law, they kept his cupboard full of the cutest outfits.
I shrugged as Jameela looked at me, my annoyance fading slightly as she walked toward me and guided me to sit back on the bed. I needed it. I could see that she was feeling bad, and didn’t know what to tell me. After all, it wasn’t her fault that my husband had become a screw-up.
“I know you are probably sick of hearing this,” she said quietly, perching next to me as I shifted backward against the continental pillows. “But maybe you need to give him some more time. Hamzah is not a bad person. I promise he will come around.”
He’s not a bad person? Do good people do the things he does?
I scoffed, not believing her. She was just so sickeningly positive about everything.
That’s exactly what everyone had told me. Give him time, time, time. Time was gone. Time had morphed into over two months and Hamzah wasn’t ready for the game.
”He’s been through a lot,” she said, her voice even quieter. “It’s been tough for him. He didn’t think he would make it back here alive.”
“And what about me?” I retorted, my heartbeat racing as I thought about everything he put me through. “How must I just pull myself together? What about my heart?”
Jameela was looking at me sympathetically but I could see that she was still thinking about the exchange with Hamzah. It was probably the first time she had seen him since he was back and I didn’t blame her. I myself was a little shocked at how different he looked… How worn he appeared… as if he had been through something that had taken a little too much from him and forgot to give it back.
”Zubair had said he had changed,” she continued, her gaze on me as she shook her head. “I didn’t realise how much. At least you know that he misses you. He wouldn’t have come up here if he didn’t.”
“He came here by mistake,” I said, feeling a little upset about that. “Imraan brought him and he thought I was downstairs with Zaynah. Bolted as soon as he saw her. He didn’t mean to be here with me. It was completely unintentional.”
”No ways,” she insisted, her voice rising slightly. “His heart guided him here! It was because he loves you that something in him was awoken and led him straight here… to rekindle that flame that was flickering in his heart!”
I cracked as smile and shook my head at my sister, amused at her analogy of the entire situation.
Some things don’t change. Jameela had always been the textbook romantic. That’s why I was glad that she had Zubair, because I knew that he fulfilled all her romantic expectations in every way. He wasn’t shy to show her how he felt about her, which is way more than I could ever say about Hamzah.
I sighed and breathed in deeply, willing myself not to cry.
It wasn’t worth it; all those tears. The thing is, I knew that, at some point, Hamzah would have to snap out of it. My fear was that, at that point, I wasn’t sure if he was going to opt for a permanent separation or if he would want to reunite. I wasn’t even living with much hope any more and having with that uncertainty was killing me. Did he even love me anymore?
I wasn’t even sure when was the last time he said it.
”He doesn’t have a heart,” I said decidedly, upset with him now. “He’s selfish. All he cares about is himself.”
Jameela was silent and i took the opportunity to pull my phone from the dresser and open my Instagram app, knowing that I would find a new message there that might lift my spirits. As usual, it didn’t disappoint. Three dms were in my inbox and the one was a girl who wanted to send me some baby products to advertise. Now that my followers had reached at least 20k, I knew that I could start doing bigger projects and earn better money through my account.
And the thing was, I wasn’t only wasting time on social media. I felt like I was being active and doing things that were beneficial to humanity as a whole. Besides helping other struggling mums, posting pictures of Palestine and the cause that was so close to our hearts was all well and good, and showed our solidarity, but I often wondered if social media has created a culture that rewards people for wanting to be known as the type of person who cares about a cause more than for actually caring about it.
This is why people do things like share articles without reading them. It conveys a certain type of image of who the person is. In a situation of tragedy, social media feeds the ego and makes the suffering of others another reason to bring focus back on yourself.
An obvious question that gets missed is – what is the point? What is the desired outcome? What is the net positive impact of “awareness”? The truth is; these things cannot be measured in any meaningfully quantifiable manner.
The thing was, despite needing the distraction, I was kind of feeling mentally exhausted by it all. There was so much going on in my life and now I had this other life going on… Online activism becomes less and less about helping those in need, and more and more about policing who is speaking about issues and in what manner. We sit on our devices waiting to be told what to care about next.
And without realising it, my posts had taken a slightly dark turn. I didn’t know what I was even posting about, but feelings were pulsating through my body and I had to let it out somehow.
And there i was again, sitting on my device, waiting for some sign of what to do when I could just be laying low and thinking of how my life was going to play out from here.
Nabi 雜 said, “There will be afflictions (in the near future) during which a sitting person will be better than a standing one, and the standing one will be better than the walking one, and the walking one will be better than the running one, and whoever will expose himself to these afflictions, they will destroy him. So whoever can find a place of protection or refuge from them, should take shelter in it.’’
I knew that it was the solution and the antidote and I wished that I could grasp that concept of being less involved… but I was way too sucked in right then to move away.
I sighed, not even realising that Jameela was talking again and I probably was too zoned out to listen.
“… and it’s been a journey for us too,” she was saying. “Really. I don’t think anyone’s life is meant to be easy. And even though things aren’t perfect, Ammaar is such a darling. I would never want him to leave. I just hope that his uncle doesn’t pop up and make this dream a nightmare.”
”Sorry, Jamz,” I said apologetically, trying to get my head out of the rut. I had to snap out of it.“I didn’t hear that first part. Has there been an update from the uncle?”
I remember seeing him all those months ago and how just his presence had made my blood boil.
“Nothing for now,” she said, her brown eyes holding a certain amount of hesitation as she said it. “I’m just worried about the future, and how long we can live the fairy tale that we are…”
”Did you guys discuss whether Ammaar is his son or not?”
I had cut straight to the chase because I had been wanting to ask that question for weeks but I always didn’t have the guts or had too many other things on my mind.
Seeing Hamzah today may have been a disaster but it came with benefits of being able to take my mind off of him for a bit. It satiated something within me.
”Nope,” she said softly, moving her hand to her tummy as she turned around and looked at me. “It doesn’t matter. This baby will still be his family because Zubair and him are definitely related somehow. Theres no denying that. He needs to know that he belongs with us!”
I forgot that my sister was pregnant at times. She was so super skinny that she still looked like bones even though she was already out of her first trimester.
I nodded silently because Jameela always had amazing qualities.
”I want Zubair and Ammaar to have a good relationship,” she said quietly. “Sometimes I wish that Zubair and his father had a better bond. I always feel like I’m the buffer. They’re okay… but I wish it was better. I want to keep the family together and united. Theres so much going on and life is too short for holding grudges.”
Jameela and her kindness again. I probably wouldn’t care much about everybody else, but it was probably because of the state of mind that I was in currently.
Whilst many daughters-in-law would simple cut their husbands off from their families and pull them completely into their own, Jameela was always insisting that they had to maintain a good relationship with Zubair’s family. Sometimes we don’t realise how important it is to be someone who doesn’t try to wedge a gap between our husband and others. At the end of the day, a man still needs his family too.
“Is Zubair still angry with his father for all those things that happened to him?” I asked, really wanting to know how my brother-in-law was coping nowadays.
I knew that Zubair had a tough time, and my questions weren’t completely selfless. I wanted to know how Hamzah would fare when we was out of his situation too. I knew it was different but Hamzah’s haunted look was a little like how Zubair used to be when I first met him.
I wanted to know how long it took to heal and rise above it.
Zaynah was still stirring in the cot add Jameela had already stepped in to soothe her.
“It’s a long journey,” she murmured. “He still has nightmares about his past, but it’s become less frequent. I don’t think that it ever goes away completely though.”
I nodded. I could deal with that. I could. Even if Hamzah had to come back, I would deal with it for the rest of my life if I had to.
Zaynah had started whimpering in the cot and I knew that she was due for a feed, so I passed Jameela a bottle that I had expressed..
As amazing as it was catching up with my sister, I was feeling a little overwhelmed with thoughts right then, and also, she was heading off to see Nusaybah who had come down for Eid. I told my sister to hand Zaynah off to my mother so I could have some peace.
Once everyone else, including Nani, Maahira and Rabia, who was in good spirits, had come in to greet, I was so exhausted that I didn’t even plan on going on Instagram again. Of course, once I heard the notification of a message while I changed from the slack suit I was wearing into a button down night shirt that was good for sleeping in, removed my make up and went to the bathroom, I didn’t expect to hear my phone buzz.
I did expect Maahira to message with some juicy bits about her and Rabia’s conversation here which I was completely and surprisingly unbothered about, but what I didn’t expect was Hamzah’s message that came later that night.
Assalaamu alaikum. What can I say? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you like that.
I didn’t expect his message or even an apology. I couldn’t resist being straightforward. I was tired and a bit annoyed at him. Did he mean leave me, like per se? Or did he mean leave the room and bolt like a little startled deer earlier on today?
Wslm. So why did you? You acted as if I was poison.
His reply came quickly after.
It was like a reflex reaction. I’m scared, Mos, it had nothing to do with you. It’s the whole baby thing. But today I realised how much I miss you. You know that you’re my weakness. Can I call?
I sighed, not completely immune to the sweet talk and really wanting to hear his voice, but also not wanting to make this easy for him. It was the first time he had reached out to me properly, over the past few weeks, but my logic was telling me to pull him a little longer in case he runs away.
What did he think I was? Some kind of joke he could just be his part-time wife without a child? Making this easy would have disastrous repercussions.
Not tonight.
I typed a brief reply and left it at that, because I didn’t want to go into the whole ‘miss you too’ scenario. That went without saying for me. The man had to dense if he didn’t realise just how much I missed him.
Okay.
It was all he said, and I didn’t reply because I knew that I had been a little harsh. He too, had surrendered so easily. I wasn’t sure why.
And as tired as I was, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling and listening to Zaynah cry in the other room, because I didn’t have it in me to message Hamzah and take back what I said, or to get our child before she morphed into some kind of fit of emotional distress. Finally, my mother brought her to me to be breastfed, and I drifted off into a weird slumber that somehow took me to the next morning.
You know that feeling you get sometimes that you know you felt before… but somehow, you just can’t remember exactly when it was that the feeling became that overwhelming feeling that it was.
The next morning, I woke up with a thought that I hated breastfeeding. I told my mother that I won’t be feeding Zaynah anymore, completely immune to Nani’s chiding when she heard it. I didn’t know what it was that had triggered it. I didn’t know that something greater was going on in my body and with my emotions. All I knew was that I had to shake myself off the suffocating emotions that had overwhelmed me ever since Zaynah was born.
I felt like a bad mother but I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep. The days were literally a blur. I didn’t hear from Hamzah, and though I still used social media, I didn’t get that kick out of it that I usually would.
Maahira had come several times, chatting to me and trying to cheer me up with all her amazing gifts and conversations, but somehow, I wasn’t biting. She also had a few work obligations that she had to meet and though she tried to be there often, I knew that she had other things to do and left her to it.
It was a week later when Rabia came in a particularly good mood. She had been coming in occasionally but now that she had finished her first semester exams and she was free for a bit, her ideal morning was spent just bathing and pampering her niece. She was being extra chatty and i was being extra rude, but she was completely unaffected because she had Zaynah and that’s all that mattered to her. Or maybe she was just happy that Hamzah and I weren’t together. After all, I hadn’t heard from him in a week and there was no way that I was going to chase after the idiot when he was completely ignoring me.
i focused on Rabia again as she sprinkled some talcum power on Zaynahs vest.
”I just love baby scent,” she said with a smile. “It’s the most calming and relaxing thing ever.”
I didn’t have it in me to smile. I murmured something in response while I looked up at the ceiling.
What the hell was she even on? Getting high on baby powder?
She looked happy. Somehow, her permanent frown and fixation on her phone had simmered down and I could see her being a little more relaxed around me. I wasn’t prepared to extend the same kind of olive branch to her, though. I just wasn’t in the mood for that type of admin..
I let her get on with the task of seeing to Zaynah. She spoke to her cheerily as she changed her, making cooing noises and sounding a little too obsessed for my liking.
I couldn’t deny that she would have made a better mother than me. She was droning on and on about how she had looked into this baby massage therapy and was even thinking of doing a course on it because all of its million benefits that didn’t faze me in the least.
”And since you’re doing some baby posts, maybe we could do some kind of collab?” She said, fastening the studs on Zaynah’s vest as she glanced at me. “If I ever go ahead with it, that is. It just seems so amazing to work with little babies all the time is a dream.”
I didn’t understand how it could be a dream. Babies were super whiny and just bloody annoying. They always needed something or the other.
I shrugged, and wondering how much more of her talking I would have to endure. I wasn’t aware at what point I had gotten up to go to the bathroom. I had left her to put Zaynah off to sleep and from sleeping all the time, I had now gone to not sleeping at all. I wasn’t sure what was going on.
Anxiety and unexplained feelings overwhelmed me, and there was many a time when I felt like I just didn’t know what to do with myself.
I wasn’t even sure why I had wondered out onto the landing that morning. My parents house always had this steep wooden staircase and though we had put a gate for Zaid, it was still a bit risky.
Because Zaid wasn’t around today, I noticed that the gate had been left open. I wasn’t quite aware of how quickly I was advancing toward the staircase until I was on the edge of the top stair, and as I hovered there, I couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of exhilaration. It was weird and scary, but the thought of letting myself fall off the edge was strangely consuming.
I wasn’t even fully comprehending. The thought of what would happen after didn’t even strike me. Fear of pain or accidental damage was just by the way.
It was at that moment that I thought to myself; this moment could be one of two things… the moment I could finally free fall, and rid my mind of everything that had happened, or a spectacular way to just spread my wings and free myself of everything that had overwhelmed me.
All I knew was that things were a little hazy for a few seconds, and the next thing, I was already letting myself fall headfirst down the staircase.
The last thing I heard as I leaned forward was Rabia screaming for me… and then… I just blacked out.
Please make maaf for any errors or things I may have forgotten. I will edit in the morning
Wslm 🤍
Someone asked Ali (RA): “How much was the Sahaba’s love for the Prophet (Sallalahu Alaihi wa Sallam)”
He replied: “By Allah! To us The Prophet (Sallalahu Alaihi wa Sallam) was dearer to us than our riches our children and our mothers, and was more cherishable than a drink of water at the time of severest thirst.”
SubhaanAllah… what perfect imaan they had… May Allah enable us to practise..💕
#RevivetheSunnah
#RevivetheSunnahofbeingGrateful
#RevivetheSunnahofQur’aanTilaawat
#ReviveSunnahofDuaa
#SunnahofMaintainingTies
#RevivetheSunnahofSadaqah
#RevivetheSunnahofGivingGifts
#RevivetheSunnahofGoodAkhlaaq
#RevivetheSunnahbeforeSleeping
#RevivetheSunnahofGuardingtheGaze
#RevivetheSunnahofLickingtheFingers
#RevivetheSunnahofMiswaak
#RevivetheSunnahofEnteringtheToilet
#RevivetheSunnahofSpeakingGood
#RevivetheSunnahofEntertaining guests