Salma narrated:
I dwell in my house with a husband,
children and grandchildren. I am surrounded by my family. My mother and father,
my brothers and sisters along with their spouses and children live all around
me. Encircling us is one fence, and we live as one united family. We begin and
end our days together in an atmosphere of affinity, tenderness, and harmony. We
gather at intimate meetings where we share interesting talks, festive meals,
familial visits, future plans, shared business and collective trips.
One night, I fell asleep, woke up the next
morning and went over my daily house tasks as usual only to find all kinds of
furniture and decorations around me have changed, even some walls.
I then headed to the rooms of my children
to check on them, but I was confronted with strange faces coming out of my
children’s rooms and from all around the house. I saw a family; men and women,
gray-haired and young, elderly and children, all of them had gathered around
breakfast in the very same place I used to gather with my family and children.
It was as if they have settled in that place. I went out, terrified, as if it
had been a dream, and headed to the houses of my family members around us, and
all of them followed me and walked behind me quietly. I entered the houses one
by one to find all the faces changed, and from wherever I came out, people
would follow me, so I thought that I either went crazy or that I was in
horrible nightmare. I asked them: Where are my family? Where are my children
and grandchildren? Where’s my husband, my mother and my father? Where are my
brothers and sisters? Where are all my family members? But all of them were
astonished and didn’t utter a word, so I asked, “Who are you?
And where did you come from?
How did you settle in my house and take
over my possessions and my family’s belongings?”
They said, “These houses are ours. We
inherited them from our forefathers.”
I said, “How? Could such a thing happen
overnight?”
They said, “You are our great great-grandmother,
and you have been asleep for a hundred years, so you are most welcome,
dignified and honored among us, just as you had been, for we are still your
children and grandchildren.
I said, “It must be a nightmare! That is
impossible.”
They said, “It’s the truth.”
Out of shock, I fell to the ground with
pouring tears. I felt my soul was going to melt out of regret and remorse for
the loss of my beloved ones in a blink of an eye.
After I submitted to God’s will I said:
“Didn’t anyone of them remain?
They said, “this granddaughter of yours is
the only one who remained out of those whom you knew before you slept.”
I saw a clumsy old lady, but she didn’t
recognize me. She was only three years old when I went yesterday to sleep. What
else could I do other than to stay by her side, sensi ng their smell through her, reminiscing
special moments with them, their movements and their laughs that filled the
place last night and all the time before? All that while thinking to myself,
“When shall I meet you? My God make it quick, my God hasten me to a garden
[i.e., Paradise] as wide as the heavens and earth where there’s no doom and
gloom, no grief and agony and no death, but rather eternal life. My God, take
me to them for I cannot endure persisting without them…
That’s not fantasy, but the reality we are
gradually facing everyday with whom we are losing without noticing that.
Those
who were before us are gone… ﴾Then We produced after them a generation of others ﴾31﴿ ﴿ [23/Al-Mu'minun: 31]
…then we will return to our God alone just
as we came alone. All those with whom we will be coeval, live together,
exchange admiration, intimacy and respect came like us to this world
individually, one after other, and will leave it as such.
All of us will separate likewise, and within
a century we will be underground and nothing of us will be left except some
talks about us like a departed people, as if we never existed!
﴾
[It will be said to them], “And you have
certainly come to Us alone [i.e., individually] as We created you the first
time, and you have left whatever We bestowed upon you behind you….﴿ [6/Al-An’am: 94]
Out of those emotions among us nothing
will persist except for what was connected to God.
﴾Close friends, that Day, will be enemies
to each other, except for the righteous ﴾67﴿ ﴿ [43/Az-Zukhruf: 67]
Other than that is worthless, regardless
of the kinship bands, be those as they may.
﴾On the Day a man will flee from his brother ﴾34﴿ And his mother and his father ﴾35﴿ And his wife and his children ﴾36﴿ ﴿ [80/Abasa: 34-36]
And ﴾They will be shown each other. The
criminal will wish that he could be ransomed from the punishment of that Day by
his children ﴾11﴿. And his wife and his brother ﴾12﴿ And his nearest kindred who shelter him ﴾13﴿ ﴿ [70/Al-Ma’arij: 11-13]
And even ﴾And whoever is on earth entirely [so]
then it could save him ﴾14﴿ ﴿ [70/Al-Ma’arij: 14]
But how far that is!
Because ﴾Every soul, for what it has earned, will
be retained ﴾38﴿ ﴿ [74/Al-Muddathir: 38]
Indeed ﴾My Lord, You have given me [something] of
sovereignty and taught me of the interpretation of dreams. Creator of the
heavens and earth, you are my protector in this world and the Hereafter. Cause
me to die a Muslim and join me with the righteous ﴾101﴿ ﴿ [12/Yusuf: 101]
﴾Or [consider such an example] as the one who passed by a township
which had fallen into ruin. He said, “How will Allāh
bring this to life after its death?” So Allāh caused him to die for a hundred years;
then He revived him. He said, “How long have you remained?” He [the man] said,
“I have remained a day or part of a day.” He said, “Rather, you have remained
one hundred years. Look at your food and your drink; it has not changed with
time. And look at your donkey; and We will make you a sign for the people. And
look at the bones [of this donkey] - how We raise them and then We cover them
with flesh.” And when it became clear to him, he said, “I know that Allāh is
over all things competent ﴾259﴿ ﴿ [2/Al-Baqara: 259]
This is a depiction I drew in my mind
inspired by the story of Uzair, peace be upon him. I cast it on reality through
an imaginary character and I invite you to cast it on your reality so that we
all can see the truth of this world, because we have so much to learn from (the
stories of) former nations …
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