Tuesday, September 26, 2006


Ramadhan musings.

Sometimes. It feels as if I will never fit in.

It feels as if I will never know my place here. The way I didn’t know where I stood when I was younger. The way I always stood on the boundaries and fluttered and flittered – here to there to here. I never seemed to have peers, and when I did, sometimes I alienated them. The other times I didn’t, we became fast friends. But this alternate sequence of events is rare a find. Usually the former happens.

There are many things about me that people don’t like. I used to not want to change. After accepting that I had to change – fi sabilillah, insyaAllah – all those months ago, I did, and I will be the first to admit that I was the better for it. That was before I came here. To the land a friend called ‘the Country of Festivities’. Cheers, mate.

Here, I have no family to openly and heatedly argue and love. I have nobody who will love me unconditionally – at least, not the way my parents did. They endlessly worked on my flaws, as parents are wont to do, and yet loved me. They could not help but love me, because God stated as thus.

But here. Here you have to be independent. And even if you have a network of close people who love you fillah, there are bound to be clashes of thought and experience and opinion. Here comes in this concept that has been one of the most difficult for me to build within myself: FORGIVENESS.

There are two words in Malay that sum it together: ‘Berlapang dada’. As a sister once said, it means ‘Carrying forgiveness within you, wherever you go.’

Now, isn’t that a wonderful concept?

But I will be the first to tell you that it is wonderfully difficult, too.

A few years back, when I was still in secondary school, I sometimes felt like I was meant to wander the lands like a stranger – a ghuraba. I later on learnt that that was true, but that I was not supposed to wander the lands alone, and that as a person willing to struggle, I could not live alone.

The English saying goes, ‘No man is an island.’

And I suppose, that is where my main struggle lies, right now.

Sometimes it feels like my big test lies in ridding my soul and mind of all the jahiliyyah that used to encumber it and slow it down – the small things such as whiling away my time with things that do not amount to anything, backbiting, holding grudges, and speaking unnecessarily of unnecessary things (it’s a term that has had a lot of bad press back in my home country, I know, but it’s also the term used in the Quran, and used generally by figures such as the late Sayyid Qutb and al-Maududi).

At moments or hours like this, though, after being engulfed by the spirits of people who share my thoughts and aim – sometimes it feels like I’m struggling for air.

I was such a sucker for non-conformity and individuality before, that I am afraid that I will lose it all one day. It’s an inner fear that I would not be me anymore.

But I always seem to forget, everytime I give myself the space to feed on this small fear, that Allah does not want us to be exactly the same. If the Lord wanted, He could have made us all into clones of each other. But instead, he created amongst us differences, and made us all unique individuals, so that when placed together by Love for Him, we would be able to add our special somethings to the mix and come up with brilliance and unrivalled strength.

As Zakkiratul Qalbun said to me, when we were lost on a mount leading up to Squeaky Beach, that memorable morning in Wilson’s Prom, “It’s wonderful what tarbiyyah of the heart does to you.” When I confided in her about my worries, she also told me to not give up – to hang in there, because although there will be difficulties, they will be sweet and memorable, somehow, because each smarting of the eye or the heart will help build my character in the end, and I would not but look back in amusement at it all.

Now, slightly more than a week after that fateful Sunday morning, I think I sort of get the gist of it.

Ramadhan has definitely pulled the ties that bind us much closer together. For some reason, we are able to live in a sort of peace with each other. As someone who tends to live in the outskirts of things, I still like my space, and I still tend to observe from my own invisible fortress of solitude. But people respect that, and they don’t try to ambush it down. I like that.

I just don’t like being odd and strange and distant from anyone else. Although sometimes I’m just plain asking for it.

So this is my battlefield for now: Learning to live with other people. Some people find it easy, but it’s still an endless struggle for me. I’ve seen what it does to people, though, and even though I have qualms about what I have to do on my part, I want that in the end. I want that sort of love, and I want that sort of friendship – and I won’t be devastated if I don’t, but I’ll definitely be disappointed in myself if I don’t try. I know some people already love me all the same, but they are already a part of the network. I still have to try and fit in. I feel like I have to earn people’s acceptance of me; that I don’t have to change who I am, but I want them to accept who I am.

I reckon, with all the limitations of my human mind and heart, that this is part of my re-education – my tarbiyyah.

“It’s wonderful what tarbiyyah of the heart does to you.”

Moral of the story: Tarbiyyah means that certain changes have to be made. Our struggle calls for sacrifice. Which great struggle doesn't? But these sacrifices will be purely for our Lord, insyaAllah. And these changes will make us better people, insyaAllah. :)

May the madrasah of Ramadhan build us all into insani who will withstand the rest of the year’s duration. Until we meet with Ramadhan again, insyaAllah.

Sigh. It’s only just started, and already I’m talking as if it’s about to end. But time does fly so, doesn’t it?

Wassalamualaikum.

this has been a rant by Syazwina Saw at 9:21 pm

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