A Cut Above

Bismillahir Rahmaanir Raheem

Waseem: Every saint has a past...

“I found the gold.”

“You found the gold?” I asked, highly amused.

I wasn’t sure if he had a concussion. There was that injury on his head… But it looked like just a shallow cut above his left eyebrow. I had to check.

“You not talking about your car, right?” I asked. “Coz that thing is a write-off, Zee.”

He closed his eyes again, but there was a hint of humour somewhere beneath his stagnant expression.

“I found it,” was all he said, with a mysterious undertone.

We were quite close to the hospital by then, and they were wheeling him off to the casualty ward, to check for any other injuries.

Muhammed took care of the paper work and I saw Ziyaad getting checked up, to make sure everything was okay. I did the phone calls to whoever needed to know, down-playing the accident drastically.

“They say I was lucky, huh?” Ziyaad was saying, as I walked in and the doctor walked out. “They don’t know how well that car is built for it.”

I frowned at him, thinking about how dense my younger brother was. Maybe it was the knock on his head.

“Oh, shit,” he said, looking alarmed all of a sudden and trying to sit up.

I was hopeful.

“The airbags… Waseem… The airbags popped! But I didn’t have my seatbelt on. Yoh, those people lied.”

I stared back at him, trying to telepathically drill some sense into this owe. He was a tough nut.

“Yeah, but, it’s okay,” he continued. “That’s probably what kept me safe.”

I didn’t know whether to smack him at that point, or to laugh in his face. I decided on neither.

“Err, boss,” I said, getting just a little bit impatient. Not to mention, emo. “Do you understand that you nearly, just, like, scraped dying? Like, you could have died. Even in the car you were driving. Even with the airbags and everything, you could got so badly hurt, and have still died?”

I got a blank stare. Muhammed entered the room at that point. I was already on a roll.

“Understand that it was nothing to do with all that shit,” I continued, gaining momentum.

Now I was getting angry. My voice shook as I continued, realising the truth of what I was saying. I had to let him know.

“When every other means failed,” I started, staring him down, “HE saved you from the life that was tearing you apart. When… When you were broken, bru, that night… And even I had no hope that you could be fixed, don’t forget Who fixed you. When every other creation failed you, when you were down and under, don’t you ever, ever forget… your Creator never did. Only He remained. Only Him.”

My voice broke, and the words resounded in my ears, as if I was hearing them again.

Never forget what He saved you from. That moment when you swore you couldn’t fix it, He did it for you.  Never forget Who put you back together. When everyone pulled out, and you had to face it all alone, don’t forget Who pulled you through. Never forget who carried you, when the storm pushed you to your knees and there was no one else left. No matter who or what is beside you now, never forget the moments when it was only Him. Don’t forget Who remained.

He remained. He always remains.

It was a moment when everything I had thought I didn’t understand seemed to come into perspective. When the confusion disintegrated and the darkness lifted. When I met a guy whose words truly made me realise exactly what I was missing all this time.

My mind jogged briefly back to that day, not that long ago.

“There’s someone you have to meet,” Junaid was saying, that day in the car.

It was the first time I had met him, and I was kind of confused by him wanting me to meet someone else. I mean, he didn’t even know who I was, leave alone what kind of people I got along with. I was immediately sceptical… Not to mentiom, completely averse.

I had thought about it often, wondering if he had planned it all. If he had known what was going to happen, and set out with that intention. Or if everything had just worked out the way it did, because there was obviously something great in store for me because of it.

We reached the Masjid that day, reading Maghrib in Jamaat. At that stage, I was trying to do the Mosque thing as often as possible, but it was always an effort. I didn’t take it quite as seriously as I was supposed to.

We were on our way out, when Junaid tried to steer me in the oposite direction. I was about to tell him to back off and leave me alone, just because I was so arrogant, but something made me stop and think.

For once in my life, instead of having some kind of recognition and being the main man in a crowd… In this place, everyone who came here for the true purpose were all equal.

I was slowly learning to eat some humble-pie for the first time in my life. Humility had always been a foreign concept to me.

I looked at who he was pointing to. He looked like a Maulana kind of dude, and though he seemed like he was probably really hectic, he was young and there was something about the few people who gathered around him that made me also want to be a part of it. He had the type of presence that made you instantly like him.

How he reached out to meet and greet every person within his midst, making them all feel like they were something special. I mean, this was something I had learnt about in business. To butter people up and get them on your side. It was a common trick even when dealing with girls, but the way that this was done… Was different to how I had known it. There was so much of sincerity… It was just so real, that it caught me completely off guard.

This guy was definitely a cut above the rest.

Before I knew it, I was within the crowd, Junaid by my side, quickly edged forward.

Junaid seemed to actually know this guy, and he greeted him back warmly, smiling broadly. I studied this guy, maybe just a tiny bit sceptically. He was tall… Even slightly taller than me, with a enviable build. His face was cladded with a full beard, and he was literally permanently smiling. Really, like, his face shone. You know how they say some people just let off ‘light’? This was the guy.

“This is a friend,” Junaid said, gesturing to me. “A Mus’ab of our time.”

Mus’ab?

The Maulana dude smiled, and I actually felt like I was staring at him. Up close, he was even more influencing. There was something about this person that made me want to know his story. I felt like he could probably see right through me, but because of this, I wanted him to be the one who would offer me some type of guidance.

“He’s talking about Mus’ab bin Umair, Radiallaho Anhu,” the Maulana dude finally said, looking at me, with a more serious face. “Famous, wealthy sahabi… He sacrificed the world for Deen. Read up on him.”

Mus‘ab bin ‘Umair (RA) was a very handsome young man with a pair of natural Blue eyes. He was the son of ‘Umair who was a wealthy person. Mus‘ab (RA) accepted Islam at a time when life had been made unbearable for Muslims. He was turned out of his home and was socially boycotted. He had to suffer countless miseries. This pampered young man embraced Islam at a time when those who believed in Islam were refused food and water and were thrown in dark prison cells. 

Maulana dude held out his hand for me to shake, and I greeted him, correcting what Junaid was saying. Me, compared to a Sahaba?

“Name’s Waseem,” I said, unyielding in my stance. I wanted to figure him out… To see why he was so distinct.

“Good to meet you, bru,” he said, still shaking my hand warmly, smiling again. I cracked a smile back.

He spoke again.

“I’m Umar.”

• Change
• Da'wah
• Deen
• Islam
• Sahabi
• Wealth