Love for Allah... Ibadah...

Chapter 2- The Journal Begins

2

Rubdha

18th January 2016, Mysore.

She sat at the same desk she had occupied for the three years of her life, that she had spent in this University, in this very room. Her vacant eyes stared at the blank page of her new Journal that stared back at her mournfully. A new beginning; that's what life had offered her. A blank page, to rewrite her life and not let her gruesome past overshadow her present, that was free of him.

She looked away with a deep sigh, that made her ache within. Breathing should not have been this difficult, but it was. Somewhere around the past two years, she had lost that will to live and after that, her mere existence had become nothing but a pain: a pain that refused to go away.

The room wasn't in use right at the moment and she was grateful for the silence. She needed it right then, she even craved for it. She had decided to escape the confines of her maternal house, that she had lived for twenty one years before moving away with him, and had come to her university so she could think in peace. She had to make sense of her life. She had to decide what she needed to do after this whole thing; this debacle that had become her life. And for that she needed solitude. She needed to be free of all the taunts that were levelled at her, in her home. Home... Could the place even be termed as a home anymore? Home was supposed to be a sanctuary, a safe haven. For her it was the place she was thrown the most stones at; a place where she was made to walk on a barbed wire of despise on a daily basis. The past three months had been especially horrible to her in that house and she was sure that the next four months would be more harsher than the past three had been. At least the last three months hadn't seen her confined amidst the four walls of that house. She could come and go freely, with some additional taunt here and there. The next four months after today, would be the days of her iddah (period of time spent away from all the non mahram eyes). And she was sure that her stay in the place would be made very uncomfortable, torturous even. She wiped a tear from her eyes and smiled slightly. After what she had gone through in the past eighteen months, what was four months more? At least this time it won't be as bad. And Shamaila would be with her twenty four seven.

The shrill bell rung and her heart leapt dangerously at the sudden intrusion in the silence. She swallowed thickly and chided herself for being taken by surprise in an University, where bells were supposed to ring after all. A glance at her wrist told her that it was almost an hour since she had been sitting here doing nothing but stare at the blank page before her.

Outside the class, students were walking in the corridor, in a hurry. None of the students entered the room though. She turned towards her journal once more and lifted the pen beside it. She had to get her thoughts on this blank sheet of paper. Because she surely couldn't speak anything to others anymore: while they knew her pain, they could never guess the intensity of it. She closed her eyes tightly once and then reopened them as she began to write:-

18th January, 2016.

Allah.

Who is Allah? As I write this my whole being bows in gratitude and love. I sway between fear and hope when I hear His SWT's name. The beloved name of my Rabb, of my world, of my love... Allah! Can you feel the heartbeats fastening as you say it? Can you feel the tears that flow freely through your eyes? And yet somehow I want to capture the feeling through my words. I want you to know who He is even though He is someone indescribable. He is the Rabb of everything that exists. He is the one who always was and always will be. The one who began to love me even before I even existed. He gave me life and He made me, me... my own identity that doesn't match anyone's in this whole world. Can you even tell me how many humans have passed through this world since the time of Adam Alaihi Salam till now? And yet each and every human have had their own identity, their own face, their own shape and their own fingerprint, which is unique and who is responsible for this? My Allah, The Khaaliq (Creator). His is the name that echoes in this whole world at every second of the day at some place or the other. He made the skies and the earth and every other planet. He made the sun and the moon and created their axes and He created the night and the day. He gave us sleep and He awakes us (Alhamdulilllahi rabbilaalameen), and yet He is the one who neither sleeps neither dozes off because He is Al Hayy Al Qayyoom, The one who is alive and will always be unlike everything single thing which will die.