A Little Intervention

Bismillahir Rahmaanir Raheem

Muhammed was just an ordinary guy. An ordinary guy with an ordinary life. Plain and simple. Nothing special.

Honestly, now that I think about it, he had nothing going for him, except the fact that he was, I suppose, ‘street-wise’. And that’s what he had used to get to the top. He really lived the life. And, no, you could never undermine it. His life was what anyone would call a high-life.

Somehow, he had bagged himself a trophy wife. No-one really knew where she came from. And she was anything but ordinary. He just kind of came to us one day and said he was getting married. And that was that. Done and dusted.

Of course, there was always a favourite child. Then came Waseem.

He was in the middle, but very evidently, the blue-eyed boy. Waseem was the leader, in any crowd. The conspicuous one. Always in a good way. He never passed a crowd of without anyone noticing him and trying to chat him up. And yeah, he enjoyed the attention. As much as it annoyed the hell out of me, I was kinda proud that my brother had a reputation. He was an outright flirt and a complete charmer, but I didn’t really care. Well, at that time, I didn’t. It was his life, his call. And then, when he suddenly announced that he’s starting hifdh, I got, like, over-suspicious.

I mean, how was he ever going to do it? No-one in our family had ever attempted it. We just weren’t that type of people. The nagging question, though, was the most concerning. Why?

I still remembered his firmly set jaw line, as I spoke to him that December evening. Just the look that he had on his face shoud have told me not to bother.

I squinted my eyes in the almost-dark hallway, trying to figure out if I was seeing him right. He looked different, but I couldn’t ascertain exactly what it was…

“Bru, I reckon you’re taking a shot in the dark,” I met his eye steadily, glad that I had finally said what was on my mind.

“Don’t you know?” He said, after a good few seconds.

I looked at him quizzically, obviously completely ignorant. I squinted. Was that stubble on his chin? It looked like Waseem hadn’t used a blade in days.

Back to the point though… Know what?

“Don’t you know what a great thing it is?” He raised his head, continuing, looking like he had got some great revelation. “To memorise the Qur’an, Ziyaad? Like can you imagine… No other nation had ever been able to do it… Except us.”

I vaguely remembered something I had heard a few years ago, when I had attended some function. I couldn’t even remember where it was… But my mind made some connection, as I digested, just momentarily, what he had said.

“And We have certainly made the Qur’an easy for remembrance, so is there any who will remember?” (Surah Qamar)

I glanced at him, giving him a weird look. What was he on about?

I had shook my head at him and didn’t say a word after that. After all, thats what youngest brothers are there for. Go with the flow. I actually didn’t really care. I was that type of guy. Carefree and unassuming.

And so life went on… Almost as if we were living in this universe that would never terminate. Life.

We didn’t realise that some things could change in just a second. A simple incident that, we did not know at the time, would rock our world.

However out of synch we had been at the time, we didn’t realise, in the next few months, we would become completely with it.

Our lives would be turned, literally, upside down.