When Hope brings you Home

Bismihi Ta’ala

Hamzah

Part 119

Forbearance. Fortitude. Grace. Hope.

The qualities that were built within me, through what was happening around me, were multi fold.

And somehow, these qualities that had built because of that were born out of a dire situation.

I owe those prisoners, those health professionals, those civilians I met, and those I didn’t, so much. The ongoing conflict continued to be a major test of faith for every being, as acute daily suffering is a diet which wearies the soul, and drains the joy.

And I could feel it draining me.

Most days, I saw only hues of grey. Grey all around.
Grey rubble. Grey officials. Grey skies commiserating losses so big, reading their names would take days. I lived through the examples of those living trials I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy, been reminded of the only truth which stands firm through this all.
There is only one rope to hold. Only One direction to turn through the horrors. Only One God who stood by us throughout the every test that stood tall and overwhelming.

Yet, the darkness was consuming. Days blended into nights as I sat, with only a basic meal given at some point in twenty four hours for me to distinguish day from day.

The lessons in humility we learn from experiences… from those whose pain we share without sharing, can be soul-cleansing. Whose losses we feel without losing. Or maybe we do lose, without realising.

We lose parts of our humanity when we allow that of others to be so diminished, so degraded.

And yet you when you are there, the divine sabr that stems from those around you is unquestionable. The love that finds its way into the heart despite all the hate, the unity despite all the destruction, the emotions that somehow take hold, is not purely coincidental. It is a great miracle that is sent from above, a work of the Master of Creation and a relief that comes like rain after a scorching drought.

It brings you hope amidst pain. It brings you peace within the war. It brings you a solace amidst the bombs that are falling from the skies.

But.

We can also lose hope if we are not careful to cultivate that which bind the senseless fragments into sensical frames. If not sensical, it may be beyond our senses. Sometimes, as we sit in the darkened cells, on our corners of oblivion, nothing makes sense. It is of meaning that my limited senses, at that frame of mind, can’t grasp.

There were times when I was lost. Broken. Hopeless. Unable to comprehend.

And suddenly, there would be a breakdown. A turbulent rush of emotions that would find its way to the fire. When prayers would turn into torrents of tears and streams of sadness, I would sit back and remember the image of a grandfather’s tender smile and the beautiful children he laid to rest, with an other worldly fortitude which only the firm heart can display.

The “soul of my soul” he had described her, the day I saw him at the border camp. And as a father, it went straight to my own soul of souls.

I wouldn’t dare think of back home. My thoughts often went to my parents and grandparents, those I loved all my life, but my mind refused to dwell in a space that hurt me the most. It was too soon to dwell on all of that.

Mohsina crossed my mind more often than not, and yet, I didn’t want to remember what kind of situation she was in now. I hoped that she had pulled through. I hoped that my presence lived within her, reminding her to egg on, and to keep being the source of strength that she had proved to be throughout the years. She had grown so much, and I hated that I was a source of more pain for her, yet I believed that she was so much stronger than she thought. I knew that something good would come through every trial that stood in our way.

And as for me, not much could be said about my state of mind. It was only Qur’ān that kept me afloat, when I was in my darkest place, and darkness for me was not just a figurative state.
There was darkness all around. For how long, I wasn’t sure, but I assumed it was around two long weeks that I had been sitting in an isolated cell. The bombing of a humanitarian aid centre next to us is what shed some light on the reality I was in. This was when I saw the faces of the men and boys whose voices I would sometimes hear moaning in pain or calling out for help. From what they said, they were lucky that we were here and not in some other facility where the conditions were deathly and inhumane. We were, essentially, one of the lucky ones.

The language barrier kept conversations short and basic, but even without words to explain. I could hear their unshakeable faith and perseverance that baffled the enemy who would try everything in their power to break them.

It was on the second day in captivity when I was moved to a cell, and while I was just blindfolded, I soon came to learn that my neighbours had shackles on both their arms and legs.
Sounds of screaming prisoners, dogs barking, American soldiers swearing at us in Arabic words they could barely pronounce surrounded us.

Hands behind their backs, legs facing forward, I watched them as I found a place to sit in my cell, observing as the guards would throw food at them and force them to shower in a cell that would expose them to every passer by. I never thought I would witness it, but the sheer torture that this alone brought was enough for me to feel like there was no justice in this foreign world.

It woke me up, distracted me from my own life for a bit, and even broke my own obsessive attachment to the life I had left behind.

And then next to me, where I find myself seated on one of those freezing nights, was a brother who spoke next to me.

And all he said in Arabic was:

”Brother, Assalamualaikum.”

And I blinked as I heard him, because I wasn’t quite ready to chat right then.

“Brother, where are you from?”

I answered him briefly, because I couldn’t think beyond the now.

All I wanted to do was ponder and dwell over what was happening to me. All I was thinking about was whether I would die here or be moved to some state facility. All I wondered was whether I will see my family again.

But in his mind… this guy who called this place we were in his home… he only knew one thing.

“Brother,” he whispered, still speaking Arabic. “I think it’s time for Maghrib salaah.”

And honestly, I was thrown. I couldn’t even imagine how this man was even capable of performing salaah, in this state. His hands were shackled and his head was covered, and yet, in his mind was only his duty to his Lord. At that point, I had forgotten Zohr and Asr, and yet this man, on his steadfastness, was only focussed on his worship.

I was blown away. I mean, I had heard of the stories of Sahaba, the stories of steadfastness and sacrifice, and yet seeing this before me was surreal.

My mind was reeling and thoughts were only on my escape, but the man next to me calmly raised his head, sat upright, and breathed the words that would bring a calming to my turbulent soul. All hope was restored.

“Allahu Akbar.”

His voice was soft and soothing as he recited, and I found myself calming down with every letter he recited in the prayer. This wasn’t just a prayer, it was a reminder. It was a message from the Healer of the broken, the Saver of the most unfortunate circumstances. It was a soothing to the distressed and a very powerful message that had come to being solace to the tortured soul that now lived within me.

And it was all I needed to reboot me. To revive me. It was the single greatest moment that defined how I viewed my time in that bracket of captivity. That, and the tales he had related to me in his broken English with my broken Arabic. Somehow, we had found a common ground, and I listened to him with interest as he told he that he was a doctor and worked at the hospital nearby. The IDF had arrested him and had abducted many other of his colleagues. He didn’t know where any of them were, but he hoped that they were well and that some day he would be able to serve the people again.

“Yes, it is very hard,” he admitted, his face still covered so I couldn’t make out his expression or even his facial features. “Sometimes not possible. But we have to keep going. We can’t let the people down. There is still hope. Alhumdulillah.”

And I barely understood. It wasn’t my home, but if it was, I probably would have fled a long time ago. There they were, holding on and not just that, even offering themselves and their lives for the cause of Allah.

I held onto hope, even in the darkness, because for them, hope was their only resistance, having nothing else. It formed the foundation for solidarity, for peace, for change. It reiterated that hope was never a mistake.

And just like that, with and through hope, the days passed by. Though there wasn’t much follow up, it was probably around day ten that they had told me that someone had come for me but they didn’t have the documentation needed for my release. It sounded like as sorry excuse, but the hope that said release would happen soon kept me going for a few days, until another raiding and explosion occurred around midnight, very close to the headquarters.

I only knew the time because I had knelt down on my way out to check a boy who was passed out, realising that he had watch that he had somehow crept into the facility. I had tried to release him… to pull him out from the rubble, but I wasn’t strong enough after days of barely eating. I wasn’t sure how I got out of my cell, or where my Palestinian friend who called himself Abu Zuhairah was. I wasn’t sure how I escaped of how my prison cell opened when the chaos ensued.

I had imagined being stuck there in the dead cell and starving while the rest of the prisoners would escape into a world that they knew so well, but yet, wasn’t that different to the place they had come from.

And even when I smelt the musty air out of the prison, I couldn’t quite process everything that was going on.

I had stumbled out, breathing in a mixture of flames and fumes, unable to decipher what was ahead of me for the few seconds. There were cries of despair, shouting from what seemed just above me as I trudged on.

I wasn’t sure how I had escaped the notice of dozens of soldiers who had been keeping a watch. Perhaps they were too occupied in retrieving the chained prisoners to notice the unchained ones who were leaving the prison.

I didn’t even realise that my arm was bleeding until I passed a teenage boy a few meters down the block who called out to me. I didn’t even pay much attention. After all, I had already passed so many people who I had blocked out, in my frenzy of leaving the situation I was in. Visions were blurred and images were fleeting.
A man with a wounded leg, getting assistance from civilians, a little child crying out of pain or hunger, a man, looking up at the sky silently, without a single word that could explain to anyone how and why he was here.

Things looked daunting. Inescapable. Overwhelming.

I rushed by, not sparing anyone a second look because I could only focus on me for now. I was past the danger zone of getting caught again but I pushed myself to lurk behind broken buildings and out of main territory.

”Sabahal Khair.”

The jolly voice in the surroundings that were so dire caught me off guard. The words of their dialect were so meshed that I couldn’t quite grasp word from word to even attempt translation.

“I don’t speak Arabic,” I said as I continued to walk, holding my arm that was now throbbing from the pain.

“You speak English?”

I glanced at him now as he walked alongside me, noticing that he had a small camera around his neck that was bouncing along with him as he walked.

He seemed appeased by my mere nod, and unfazed by his surroundings as we walked. I wasn’t sure where we were going but I did know that I had to get far enough to find somewhere to rest and then my way back home. My phone  had been taken and now there was little chance of it being returned to me, so my first thoughts were on the numbers I would have to dial to help me.

The guy next to me was on his phone, and I buried the urge in me to ask him to use it, because I wouldn’t even know who to contact here. I didn’t have any numbers with me and even getting a connection was useless to me right then.

He had just popped out the woodwork and was being way too friendly for my liking. He didn’t know that I barely had anything that he could take from me, except the clothes on my back.

”I will take you to hospital to fix your arm,” he said, his accent thick as he gestured to me. “It’s no far from here.”

I nodded and turned slightly, not quite processing everything that was happening. So much had happened in the past weeks that sometimes I wondered if I was stuck in some dream.

My response was silent but it was understood as the affirmative as I trudged along, trying to ignore the pain in my left shoulder. I wasn’t sure how it had happened but I was quite sure that the wound needed stitching and some kind of antiseptic treatment. I’d been in the dusty open air for a few hours, and I wasn’t quite sure if it was a good idea to ignore it any longer.

It didn’t take long to reach the hospital. I didn’t even realise that it was this close. But the proximity of where I was to medical attention wasn’t a problem. The availability of someone to give me attention was a bigger issue, and even as I entered and saw people rushing in, some in a frenzy as they tried to figure out where to go and what to do, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. It was as if I was in some kind of reel of movie. I felt like I was merely an actor in a series of based-on-real-life events that seemed to take these people by storm, and I couldn’t escape it. It felt surreal as I stood in line, waiting for some kind of action, until I someone in uniform working frantically in the main area of the hospital, gesturing for staff and patients to come forward as he delegated tasks in flawless Arabic.

It had taken a short while before I was gestured to sit into another queue, and I stopped as I watched the rush of people slowing down as time passed. I wasn’t sure at what point I had dozed off, but I was awakened by someone nudging me, and I started with a shock, quite perplexed that it was already looking brighter outside and somehow, I wasn’t quiet sure how I had gotten there.

Every health worker looked like death, with disheveled hair and unkept uniform, and I could already feel myself in absolute awe of what they did here every day.

And I wasn’t sure when it hit me or what I wanted to achieve, but as I sat there, I already knew that I wasn’t going to leave this place for a while.

And so I took the plunge. I knew that there was no way out right then, even if I had to wait a few days until my arm healed, but I knew that my injury was minor compared to every other casualty that was coming in here.

There were no words to describe the pain that I felt, being stitched with no anaesthetic. I could only imagine that Allah Ta’ala his own divine intervention to those who needed operations and amputations done amidst those dire conditions.

I knew that I could never compare myself to those who lived this nightmare. If you’re not in this place, if you don’t call it home. if you’ve never lost a family member or all of your family, if you’ve never been tortured, if you’ve never been starved, if you’ve never been deprived from water, if you’ve never seen bodies upon bodies stacked under the rubble, if you’ve never heard the cries of a bereaved mother, if you’ve never had to tell your child to eat less to save food for their sibling, if you’ve never had to wonder if you or your loved ones will be alive in the next five minutes, you can never say you understand the plight that they live every day. Never.

And that said, I couldn’t think of a better way to exist right then, and I couldn’t imagine what else I could do that would ever be more useful.
And so began the journey that thrust me into a position that i never, in a million years, would have thought myself being in.

It had been day in and day out, where the days blended into nights and nights into days. For every health care worker, it meant no sleep, no food and no family. As the days passed, and the siege continued, the food shortages worsened. I would spot the doctors I would see every day, and every few days, I would notice how, like me, they would break down and completely fall into despair, until they would be forced to rise up again and serve the people. They were truly the heroes, but still, were taken and threatened and abducted in mass amounts.

I made many friends, people who I would turn to and seek advice from when I needed it. I made a call, sent messages from any phones j could borrow to any numbers I could remember. I wanted to message Mohsina but I wasn’t sure if I should do that yet. Above all, I was fixated on my present. We were supposed to be safe here, but I still wondered why some of them stayed, when they could have easily left. I learnt fast, because I had to. I numbed myself to emotions, because I had to. Seeing bleeding babies was a normality for me. Witnessing the most gruesome things was almost second nature now. I figured out what to do when a patient came in injured and what not to do when there was something more serious. They needed every bit of help they could get, and as my arm got better,  I found myself carrying bodies, treating wounds and aiding people in ways I had never envisaged in my entire life. I was an accountant working as a doctor, and I couldn’t quite fathom how Allah had taken me from my meagre position in my sheltered world, to opening my eyes to this reality.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

And these people were heroes. Every single one of them. Every time I saw the hurt, the pain, the torture, all I could do was delve into the stories I knew so well, recall how Molvi used to speak about the Sahaba and be reminded of how much they had suffered at the hands of the oppressors.

Sayyiduna Bilal it was forced to lie down on scorching sand and blistering rocks. Sayyidunà Umar would sometimes call Sayyiduna Khabbäb it and ask him to turn around and lift his shirt.
Upon seeing his back, Sayyiduna ‘Umar & would cry and say, ‘O Khabbab, How did you withstand the torture of the unbelievers? I have never seen anyone with such a [badly scarred] back’Sayyidunà Khabbäb it would answer, ‘My screams could not
cool the fire of their hatred towards me, but the melted flesh oozing off my back would cool down the hot rocks.

SubhaanAllah.

And yet, then of course, as I hoped would happen, one day, as I stepped out into the open hospital passage, someone suddenly called my name.

I had thought that it was the doctor I had been speaking to that morning, giving me an update on one of their colleagues who was gone missing, but as I turned the corner, I simply couldn’t contain the excitement in my chest as I saw my very own brother after almost five weeks.

I barely expected the intense embrace he met me with as he held me, his body actually shaking from emotion as he greeted me, and then turned to look behind me to see where I had come from.

“Finally, bro,” he finally uttered, his voice so shaky that I could hardly understand him. “We’ve been looking for you for days!”

I had barely realised that coming here would have put me at a disadvantage, but now that Imraan had found me, I was quite certain that Allah had somehow sent him here for me. What I couldn’t fathom was how others existed like this, with no way out.

“Are you ready to go?” Imraan asked, his brown eyes glistening with tears as he looked at me again.

And all I could do was nod as I finally broke down, grateful and spent, even though I knew that my weakness was the only thing that determined my response… because hands down, there was no other place I wanted to be but home.

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Mission Sunnah revival: Boycott sin 

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

• Conflict
• Gaza
• Home
• Hope
• Islam
• Loss
• love. Hate
• Mujaahid
• Pain
• Palestine
• Peace
• Sahaaba
• Sunnah
• War