This piece is a dedication to all those who are fighting a battle, that no one else can understand.
Words Sakeenah N.
Photograph Sakina K.
Foreword Zahabiyah H.
Foreword
Turbulence. Usually something we associate with announcements to return to our seats, its actually a word that brings to mind the sea, rather than the air, for me. Rolling waves and walls of water ahead of cloudy and angry skies. Nature’s way of telling insignificant humans to stay out of its way. Turbulence is a part of nature and so it is that it becomes a part of our lives. We rarely call the events we trigger turbulent or even think of them that way. It is usually fate that brings tumult and we just have to learn to cling on. So it is that the below piece speaks of rafts of faith to ride out the waves of fate. Daunting and upsetting, there are lessons in wait and peace is yet to come.
A while ago, I was faced with a situation in which for a moment [of days] I froze. I could not comprehend what had just happened or what was about to happen. I was losing something, and I knew that one day in the very near future, I would find myself without it. And I cried about it for days, I cried before I slept, I cried after waking up, and I ended up randomly crying about it in the day. I continued to do that.
Until, one day it was as simple as, that I was sitting with my Quran doing the tilawat of Inna Fatahna, I had my epiphany of belief. When it sunk into me that I could not do anything to undo it, is when I realized that I could do something to make it better or stop it from getting worse. And that was when I told myself, “Sakeenah, you are not alone. There are people fighting bigger battles. Tara saathe Khuda ane Khuda na Dai che.” And after that, I took it upon myself, ke mein mara aqeedah ne mazboot raakhu. Mara yaqeen ne mazboot raakhu. Now my ambition is to achieve patience and strength, and spread that patience and strength into the hearts of everyone who is going through this with me.
Illness and pain, are a battle only if you see them as one. In reality for me, they are just tidal waves which I have to swim through. It’s true that, you don’t understand things like cancer until you see it in the face of someone your own, it’s also true that your heart goes numb seeing death waiting to knock the door. But, in the end that is where it ends. I still cry about it, but I now believe that ehna pachal ek haqeeqat che, je ma ehni ma’ani ane achai che. I shall let what is to happen- happen. Because the doer of it knows better than I do. And there are things that could go worse but have not, and will not, because we are protected- protected by our spirituality, our faith, our aqeedah. Nothing falls upon us before the strength of it to endure it does. Khuda ni ya’ari ane tofiq har talab karnaar vaaste ata’a thaanar che, ane ye ata’a karnaar Khuda aj che. Ane meye ye hasil kidu che.
One thing that Khuda Ta’ala has created common in all of mankind is affliction. Defined as, to be in a state of pain or illness. No one can answer to why situations like these arise, it is part of the unseen and unknown to which we are not rightful of knowing. It is indeed a part of fate. But the real confrontation is to have faith in fate, and the Creator of Fate.
I have found calm in this calamity. And it was only because I found faith in the fate of it first.
This post is the first in the Turbulence series
No Comments