Poetry

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

Be like the sun for grace and mercy.
Be like the night to cover others' faults.
Be like running water for generosity.
Be like death for rage and anger.
Be like the Earth for modesty.
Appear as you are. Be as you appear.

• -RUMI

An Unsaid Letter to My Parents---

My dear Abbu,my dear Ammi,

May Allah always keep you beneath the shelter of His mercy.
May He grant you long lives, fill your days with peace, and bless you with goodness in this world and the Hereafter.

You raised me.

You held my little hand when I did not yet know how to walk through this world.
You gave me an education.
You placed the blessings of the world at my feet.
You nurtured my dreams when they were still fragile things, barely more than wishes whispered in a child's heart.

And when I dreamed of becoming a doctor,
you did not let that dream remain merely a dream.

You gave it a life.
You gave it wings.
You gave it a name.

For all of this, I will remain indebted to you in ways no words could ever express.

And yet, Abbu… Ammi…

There is a sorrow inside me that I have never been able to put into words.

I am hurt by you.

Not because you did not love me,
but because perhaps you loved me in a way that left no room for the voice of my own heart.

Sometimes I feel as though every kindness you gave me has quietly become a debt I am expected to repay.

You want me to marry within the family.
Within your caste and community.
You want a man who is wealthy,
who owns a good house,
who possesses every worldly comfort,
who has enough money in the bank to survive the difficult seasons of life.

And I understand why these things matter to you.

You want security for me.
You want a life in which I never have to stretch out my hands before anyone.

But, Abbu… Ammi…

What is the worth of a house if my heart has no home within it?
What is the comfort of wealth if I have no peace?
What does a bank balance mean to a woman who is expected to spend her entire life beside a man she never chose?

What do all these worldly blessings mean to me

if the one thing that should have been asked of me—

my consent—

is never asked at all?

Allah has given me a right in marriage.

A right to consent.

A right to say yes.
And a right to say no.

But if I cannot exercise the right that my faith itself has given me,
then what remains of my choice?

I have never even seen him.

I do not know his face.

I do not know his name.

I do not know what kind of man he is when no one is watching.

Does he possess good character?

Does he understand the meaning of sakeenah or sense of peace,
Mawaddah or Love,
Wa Rahmah or ALLAH (SWT)s Rahmat.

Does he know what respect truly means?

Does he understand love—not merely as a word, but as a responsibility?

Does he know how to be a companion?

Does he understand what it means to protect a woman without controlling her?

Does he understand loyalty?

Does he know the rights Allah has given to a wife?

Will he be just with her?

Will he be gentle with her?

Will he be the kind of man beside whom a woman can sleep without fear and wake without regret?

I know none of this.

And yet I am expected to entrust him with the rest of my life.

My dear Abbu,
my dear Ammi,

I will not rebel against you.

I will not raise my voice against you.

I will not disgrace the honour you hold so dear.

I will not turn my back on you.

Perhaps, in the end,
I will lower my eyes, swallow the words caught in my throat,
and say yes to what you have chosen for me.

But please know this—

my silence will not mean that my heart agreed.

And that is the sorrow I will carry for the rest of my life.

The people who gave me life
did not ask me what kind of life I wanted to live.

The people who taught me to speak
did not ask what my heart was trying to say.

The people who taught me to dream
did not ask which dream I wanted to keep.

And so, perhaps, my dreams will remain unfinished.

I will take the dreams I once held so carefully
and bury them somewhere no one can find them—

deep inside the eyes of my heart.

And perhaps I will spend the rest of my life visiting their grave in secret.

I will place my head beside those buried dreams
and, in the darkness of my imagination,
live the life that reality would not allow me to live.

There, perhaps, I will meet the person my heart once chose.

There, perhaps, I will hear the words I longed to hear.

There, perhaps, I will live the life that could never become mine.

Because in reality,

my dreams have no place left to become true.

For if I speak of the person I chose,
I may become a na-farman daughter in your eyes.

If I speak of what my heart wants,
my character may be questioned.

My sincerity may be doubted.

My love for you may be measured against my obedience.

And perhaps the daughter you raised with so much love
will suddenly become a daughter you no longer understand.

So I will say nothing.

I will keep the name inside my heart.

I will keep the memories inside my heart.

I will keep the questions inside my heart.

And I will keep the broken pieces of my dream
where no one can see them.

I have chosen sabr.

Not because I am not hurting.

But because I am.

Not because I have stopped dreaming.

But because I have learned that sometimes
the hardest thing a person can do
is to bury a dream while it is still alive.

So I will hold tightly to the hem of sabr
and walk quietly into the life that has been chosen for me.

I will smile when I am expected to smile.

I will remain silent when speaking would cause pain.

And I will carry my sorrow without letting it become a burden upon you.

But somewhere, deep within the most hidden chamber of my heart,

a girl who once dreamed of choosing her own happiness
will always remain.

She will remember.

She will wonder.

She will mourn.

And perhaps, on the quietest nights,
when everyone else is asleep,

she will whisper a prayer for the life she could not have—

and then turn back toward sabr.

Because I have learned to live with what I cannot change.

I have not stopped loving you.

My dear Abbu.
My dear Ammi.

I have accepted your decision.

But I hope that one day,
when you look into my eyes,

you will understand the difference between

a daughter who willingly surrendered her dream
and

a daughter who silently buried it
because she loved her parents too much to fight them.

@Darakht-e-Zard

We cannot deny fate
if someone is simply not meant for us
they remain beyond reach, no matter the tears and prayers.

I believe in coincidences more than I believe in things that are carefully planned. But I don’t know what fate has in store for me, so I choose to surrender to it anyway.

Perhaps, most of the time, we choose what we think we want without realizing that something deeper within us is already guiding us. Our subconscious knows what we truly desire, what we need, and perhaps even what is meant for us.
Let this be a memory too.

What I Was Forgetting

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem

I was so occupied with what hurt I almost missed what had already been given.

I kept looking at the hardship as if it were proof that I was still waiting.

But Allah had already placed blessings in my life that I had been asking for, praying for, hoping for.

And I was too focused on what was missing to recognize what was there.

I think sometimes we become so familiar with our own pain that we forget to look around.

We forget that not everything has to be fixed for something to be good.

That we can be struggling and still be blessed.

That we can be waiting and still be receiving.

That we can be tired and still be moving toward something we once thought was impossible.

And maybe hardship is not always the interruption we think it is.

Maybe sometimes it is the preparation.

The part that asks us to become more patient, more honest, more disciplined, more willing to let go of what we thought we needed.

The part that changes us before we reach what we have been asking for.

Because sometimes what is best for us requires us to become someone we have not yet learned how to be.

And that becoming can be uncomfortable.

It can feel like loss. It can feel like delay. It can feel like nothing is happening.

But that does not mean nothing is happening.

Some things are being removed. Some things are being strengthened. Some things are being brought into alignment.

And maybe the hardship is not evidence that we are failing.

Maybe it is the very thing molding us into people who can recognize, receive, and live in what Allah knows is best for us.

So I don’t want to keep looking at my life only through the things that hurt.

I want to remember that Allah has already given me so much of what I was asking for.

And if He is still asking me to be patient, then perhaps patience is not a punishment.

Perhaps it is part of the preparation.

Perhaps the hardship is not taking me away from what is meant for me.

Perhaps it is helping me become ready for it.

I was so busy asking Allah to change my circumstances

that I almost forgot to thank Him for the ones He already had.

A secret pair of orbs watching me,
Wandering around me with no sound.
Making me want to tread carefully.
Also wanting me to color myself in his shades..
And if he is mine, change my dull world into his tranquil world.
If he is mine, then almost all paths of mine is his.
Now I feel like deepening my prayers before this attraction.
If he tells me I want to advance this simplicity into a deep passion, if he is mine.

Since the time you settled in my thoughts,
My mind plays different unsaid conversations,
Different scenarios of us.
What do you know.....
But I want you to unveil every parda of your thoughts.
Every style and every thinking of yours are memorized by me, what do you know?
Tell me is my devotion uncalled for?
How can this confusion be so sweet.?

What place does a woman’s beauty hold in this world? very succinctly put by poet Saghar Siddiqui

agar bazm-e-hastī meñ aurat na hotī
ḳhayāloñ kī rañgīn jannat na hotī

If there were no women in the gathering of existence,
There would be no colorful paradise of imagination
...
Women makes this world a wonder of beauty through their presence.

Salam everyone