Eliminating Love

Bismillahir Rahmaanir Raheem

People are complicated. I knew that.

But to put it scientifically, the human being is an extremely complex creature, and many a time, our erratic behaviour is quite disconcerting. We have this innate desire to have everything and make the most of the moment, even though in actual reality, we don’t own even that moment we think we are living to the fullest.

We often crave excitement, although we know that it’s bad news. We rely on people, even though we are well aware that they will probably let us down.

But the thing that evades us most, is what inspires us to chase. To crave. To desire.
Why do we run after other people? Why do we run after money? Why do we run after status, or power?

I wasn’t sure what made people tick, but the thing is, we all want love and respect, and we think that these materialistic things are the only things that can get us that.

Love. The best thing that can happen to you, when circumstances are right, or the worst curse that you could have ever imagined, when you are caught in a rut.

I took a deep pull of my pipe, trying to just figure it all out. What if we had to just remove that entire concept? Eliminate it. I mean, who even knows if it really exists? The oneness of two souls. Your soul mate, your other half. The fairy tale… Or where the story ends. The finding, joining, the wedding. The oneness of two souls. Being ‘complete’.

Why do we even do that to ourselves?

“You just sit around here?” My eldest brother asked, frowning deeply as he sat opposite me on the balcony chair. “And smoke pipe?”

He was so cynical.

Yeah. That was what love did to you. It made you even hate just innocent fun.

I took another pull of my new contraption. I had given up on the E-Cig. It was like an anti climax on the vaping scene. I had no time for living healthy. This was the real thing.

“Duh not,” I said, taking another pull and looking at Mo seriously.  “Sometimes I smoke cigars.”

“Just kidding, bru,” I grinned, noting his annoyed  glance. “I eat too. And go to work usually at Dad’s place. You know he can’t do much these days.”

I was trying to put on the whole responsible and organised persona but I wasn’t sure if Mo was buying it. He knew Waseem was sorting out most of Dad’s stuff. Dad was actually trying to retire. It was amazing what a change he was undergoing, and I almost didn’t believe it.

Besides, Muhammed knew me too well to believe I could commit myself to anything that required actual work.

“I’m not as lazy as you think, boss,” I said to him, pretending to be offended. “Marriage has been good for me.”

Well, certain parts of it. I didn’t want to dwell to deep. There were other parts that still haunted me every night. Parts that I wished I could forget but knew I never would.

“And your vrou?” He asked, still frowning. His permanent frown was starting to get to me.

Yoh, this was getting tiring to deal with. The guy needed to lighten up. It was like every time I saw the guy he was in a moody mix of some sort. I really wanted to just smack him out of it.

“She’s around,” I said vaguely. “Sometimes. Now she’s out.”

I didn’t want to mention that she left in a huff because I didn’t want to come with her to see her parents.

Women.

Ey, I mean, c’mon. We go there for a meal at least twice a week. That was more than enough in-law time. Besides, I didn’t feel like sitting around and making business talk with her father and brother. They were different to me, and she just didn’t get that.

“You’ll do your own stuff?” Mo asked, and I shrugged.

I could see him shaking his head, almost as if he couldn’t believe it.

“Don’t do that to you’ll,” he said, now looking seriously at me. “Don’t live separate lives.”

“We don’t,” I said, immediately getting defensive, even though I was a bit unsure of my stance. “We’re just a modern day couple. Life happens. We both have different aspirations. It’s normal.”

“No,” Mo said firmly, shaking his head. “That’s where you wrong. I thought it was normal too… Until I got caught up.”

I didn’t meet his eye.

I knew how it was. He was right. I knew how a simple man gets carried away when chics are around.  That’s why I sat at home nowadays, and cooled off. A lot had changed me, and a lot had happened to make me change.  I just needed to work more on Farah and mending our actual marriage. We got along fine, but it wasn’t good enough. I mean, I was no saint. My eyes wandered to the moist inappropriate places at times, but I knew I had a problem.

Bad company was the worst, and when you go to places where there is mixing and heedlessness, you are sure to be poisoned by what is there. When a man wasn’t getting his ‘physical service’ at home, it definitely meant that he was going to look elsewhere.

I wondered if this was what it was going to take for Mo to eventually do something to get his life on track.

“Thanks for speaking to me,” Mo said now,the frown from his face slightly fading. “Sometimes I need to feel like there’s hope for me. Waseem acts like I have some kind of contagious disease, and some of those heavy people at the Mosque give me dirty looks.”

I shrugged, and took another pull, just because I had nothing to say. The guy had messed up. Big time.

I too, couldn’t believe that my ordinary brother actually risked his marriage like that. I just didn’t expect it from him. To tell the truth, I was pretty disappointed with him. I had avoided him at the beginning, but I didn’t want to push him away completely.

“Zee, this thing is no fun,” he continued morbidly. “I wish I could turn back the clock and just erase the whole thing. I don’t want to even be anywhere any more. I just…”

He trailed off, shaking his head again. I got that feeling of wanting to be nowhere. I knew it was a level of maturity, but I had a feeling that Mo was becoming despondent.

“I just want her back,” he said suddenly, sounding even more miserable.

I looked at him sympathetically.

If only. If only we could turn back that clock. If only we could relive that moment of betrayal, where we not only sabotaged our relationship with people, but with our Creator as well. I wonder if he got that most important part.

“It’s not about people, Mo,” I said, feeling like I was endowed with age-old wisdom, all of a sudden. “It’s about what you are doing to make up for it. You don’t look for that hope in people. You keep on trying and you keep on begging. You keep on trying to make it right only for the sake of the One who never desserts you. You just never lose hope in your Lord.”

It was the only thing that had kept me going, and I knew that Mo needed to know it.

Of course people would hate what he did. People like me were rotten, so I had bounced back quite quickly compared to others.

But people of real calibre took it as a real offence, and made sure he knew it. People who took Allah as their own, took it even worse, just because of how badly he had messed up with His Creator. People of piety knew how serious the whole thing was.

Such people are truly racing towards good deeds, and to know the difference, you really had to understand what Imaan entailed.

A person asked Allah’s Rasul (SAW): What is faith? He (SAW) said: When a good deed becomes a source of pleasure for you and an evil deed becomes a source of disgust for you, then you are a believer.

He again said to Nabi (SAW): What is a sin? Whereupon He (SAW) said: When something pricks your conscience, give it up. (Ahmad)

The thing was, when you possessed real Imaan, anything that went against the law of Allah Ta’ala was completely ejected. There was zero tolerance when it came to breaking the laws of Allah.

It wasn’t a major thing, but when you somehow realise this, and try and get your life back on track, the opportunities are limitless. The impossible becomes possible and what you thought could never be, is just a stone’s throw away.

So instead of sitting and dwelling over the wrong, there was only one way to move forward, and get on with life. And as the Adhaan for Asr sounded, I put off the pipe and grabbed my keys, gesturing to my brother.

I could see him hesitant, but I knew if he cut himself off from the One who created him, he would never heal completely. He could never get what he truly wanted, or redeem himself in anyone’s eyes.

“Let’s go,” I said, not waiting for an answer. Sometimes I had to take the lead, when my older brother was acting like a child. He followed almost robotically, and I felt myself getting a little hopeful for him.

Baby steps, I said to myself. One at a time.

I headed to the older local mosque, just because I hadn’t seen Waseem the whole week, and I was kind of missing my brother. I knew he would be there.

We read the prayer in congregation, and since I thought I had missed Waseem before, I hurried to the back before he could leave. Before long the Mosque was virtually emptying out, and he was still nowhere to be seen.

I looked at Mo, a tiny bit confused, because I knew Waseem usually would never miss a Salaah at the local Mosque.

I had an idea that he might be out of town, but I didn’t think that it was like him to make a spontaneous trip, and he had said that he would see me at Asr time.

Well, I didn’t dwell on it too deep, until I got into the car and took out my phone. Maybe I should just kill the pride and ask him what the deal was. He said he would see me, and he had just gone AWOL. I was definitely wondering what was up.

And of course, as drama would have it, his phone went to voice mail three times before it finally rang. I was starting to think that someone had kidnapped my brother, when an extremely panicked and strange voice finally answered.

“Who’s this?” I said, not really caring if I was being rude.

“It’s Riyaadh,” the voice said, and I immediately remembered Waseem’s brother-in-law. What was that guy doing with his phone?

“Waseem is busy here at the hospital,” he said vaguely.

Hospital? What the…? 

“Which hospital?!” I snapped, immediately on high alert and already panicking.

Was it my parents? My father? But why would Waseem’s brother-in-law be there, in that case? Why didn’t he just call me?

I immediately swung the steering wheel, heading in the right direction, ignoring Mo’s penetrating gaze as he ask me various annoying questions.

“Bru. If I knew, I would say,” I snapped, finally pulling up at the street where the hospital was.

Like really, did he think that I just liked to keep him in suspense? It was killing me too.

I parked in the closest available parking, and raced in, with Mo right behind me. I didn’t even pause to look at any chics going past, because my mind was only on one thing.

Obviously, since I had initially thought that Waseem was probably the one who was checked in, it was the biggest relief to see him taking a seat on a bench, immediately lifting his hands to his head as he rested his head in them. His frame was looking unusually defeated, and I could practically see that something major was on his mind.

It looked as though the entire universe was on his slightly slumped shoulders, and he had the world’s troubles on his head.

Relief flooded through me, glad that it wasn’t my brother who was the patient. The catastrophic part was that I knew that it probably could only do with one other person.

Love. The thought came back to me, like it hadn’t left.

And now, I realised, that it wasn’t only about the happy ending. It’s not only about your soul mate or your other half. Not only the fairy tale… Or where the story ends, and everything that was once broken is fixed.

The thing is, that’s not where the story ends. That’s where it begins. That’s where everything begins, and your path to Jannah starts. It’s the building of a life, the building of your character, the building of patience, commitment, and sacrifice. It was what I saw here. It was what I had always imagined when I looked at them.

I knew that they were different. Waseem and his wife were like the only hope I had for this messed up family, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that ever being sabotaged. I didn’t want to kill it.

I almost held my breath as we went up to him, watching Mo slowly approach him, waiting for some kind of response.  Waseem looked up at him, hesitant at first, and then glanced at me. He didn’t say a word. It was like he was shocked into silence, for some reason.

“What’s happening?” I blurted out. I couldn’t stand not knowing. This whole thing was just so sudden and unexpected. And I hated to be in suspense.

“Zaynah,” was all he said.

I wasn’t sure if he thought we had some kind of Kashf  or what, but he didn’t continue until Mo asked him again. I was already feeling like my own world was crumbling, because I could see that this was probably a disaster of major sorts. I felt like the mirage I had been living was broken in the most vicious way.

“Is she okay?” Mo couldn’t help but ask.

Waseem looked up finally, shaking his head, and then looking down. My heart was already plummeting to somewhere beneath my feet.

“I don’t know,” he almost whispered, and I immediately held my breath. Maybe there was hope. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe it will all be okay.

He breathed in, and then exhaled, looking a bit more composed.

“She had a fall,” he said, sounding like he couldn’t believe it himself. “And now…”

He paused, and I really could not take the suspense any longer. The broken pieces were just not fitting together.

“Now what?” I pressed sharply, stepping forward almost threateningly.

He looked up at me, and shook his head.

“Now…” he said softly, as I strained my ears to hear his next words.

I almost wish I heard wrong.

“Now… She’s brain dead.”

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Maaf for delay in posting. Exam time, but I will try and post more often after two weeks, InshaAllah. 

Please don’t forget our Super Sunnahs!

Beautiful Sunnah 👐🏻 Wash both hands up to the wrist before eating.

Hadhrat Salmaan Farsi (Radhiallahu Anhu) narrates: “I read in the Taurah that the blessings of food lie in washing the hands after meals. I mentioned this to Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam). Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) replied: “The blessings of food lies in washing the hands before eating and after eating.” 

Hadhrat Abdullah ibn Abbaas (Radhiallahu Anhu) reports that Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) said: “Washing the hands before and after meals repels poverty, and it is from the sunnah of all the Ambiyaa. A pious man narrated that he once had a debt of three hundred Rupees, and due to straitened circumstances, he could not imagine how he could ever be relieved of this burden. Sitting one day in the discourse of an Aalim, he heard him say that whoever washes his hands before and after eating, in view of it being a sunnah of Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam), will Insha Allah be relieved of his debts in a short span of time. The pious man adopted the above procedure, and through the grace of Allah Ta’ala, he was absolved of all his debts in a few days time.  (The Sublime Conduct of Nabi (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) vol.1)

We will be doing more eating and drinking Sunnahs Insha Allah.

#RevivetheSunnahofEating

#RevivetheSunnahofDrinking

#Revive theSunnahofSpeakingGood

#RevivetheSunnahofSmiling

#RevivetheSunnahofMiswaak

#RevivetheSunnahofDu’aas

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