Road to Jannah

Dear blog,

Somehow real people found out about this blog and are now reading it! Ack I’ll have to think of a really scary topic to scare them away. So today, I’m going write about the ugliness of our souls….. still there? *tumbleweed* At least my mom is still reading…ma? maaaaa?!

Ok well anyways blog the other day I was watching this Bollywood horror movie (Yes i know that’s an oxymoron, but I was sick! Don’t I get any type of recreation time after Ulteying a few times?) It was about 3am and I was alone in my room in the dark so that probably made it more effective. The film actually had a semi-decent plot of this beautiful model (c’mon who else!!) who strange things start happening to. This scary looking guy keeps stalking her and one day when someone/thing attacks her he actually saves her. Turns out he’s this artist guy who keeps dreaming about this girl and keeps seeing horrible scenes of her future which he then paints, a la season 1 Heroes. So he is there to warn her, etc etc.

So there’s this one scene where she’s in the bathroom attacked by someone/thing trying to drag her underwater to drown her and she fights him/it off and then looks at the water in the tub and it’s all red. Then when she looks again it’s clear and normal and the candles are still burning and everything’s fine. She thinks maybe she just dreamt it all so she goes to the sink and washes her face with cold water. She takes a deep breath and just looks in the mirror at herself probably calling herself an idiot for believing the artist guy. Then she drops something and bends down to pick it up. For a *split second* as she bends down, THE MIRROR ABOVE THE SINK DOESN’T CHANGE! Then the camera immediately cuts down to her picking whatever up. Then even before we the audience are like ‘did we see? AHHHHHHH’…she stands back up and is looking in the mirror again but then she realizes her in the mirror is not her! It’s like an evil mirror image of her with consciousness that came to life looking back at her! They look at each other for a few seconds before she screams and the evil her just looks back at her. Seriously, it’s a really freaky scene and they filmed it really well to make even us the audience doubt what we were seeing.

And then I started thinking about it, it was so scary because it was her, but she was someone else in the mirror looking back at herself. How scary would it be if we were looking at ourselves in the mirror and all of a sudden the picture changed and it was an evil us looking back at us?

Yet everyday we look at ourselves in the mirror and ignore all our bad and evil characteristics. All our jealousy, anger, hatred, evil-thoughts. Do we not all have an evil side that is always struggling to come out? Have we not done mean, selfish things when we were given a choice? What about that time you never stopped to pick up that guy on that really cold day because you were late for Jumah? What about that time you really hated that girl because she was so pretty? What about that time when you were asked for charity and you thought oh, I might need this later? Truly, when you start thinking about these things, like me, just like that girl, you’ll never want to look in the mirror again.

Still, one Day we will have to look at that mirror so what can we do?

One of the most important lessons that I took away from Sh. Mokhtar’s Hajj seminar was about how we should be at Arafat. When you go, he told us, just be yourself. ACKNOWLEDGE yourself. Allah already knows all your deeds, your past, your future, your good, your evil. He doesn’t need any pretend goodness, play-acting or anyone else. On that wide plain of Arafat with those millions of people you just need to come there and acknowledge all your sins, acknowledge all you are, repent and ask God in sincerity for His forgiveness. Just empty your heart and show your real self.

How beautiful.

Why don’t we do that, in our daily life? Why don’t we acknowledge what we are, understand our own failings and realize the mistakes we have made. I know I for one have a hard time acknowledging my ‘evil side’ but I know it’s there. If I can just accept that and work on it, even if it’s there on the inside I know I’m being true to myself. Perhaps I can meld my two halves and one day come to look in the mirror and even smile.

I attended a funeral yesterday on a very very cold day in March. My car has been acting up by starting to smoke after exactly 25 minutes of driving. (Bad car doesn’t know smoking is bad for it’s health!) So my brother bought something in a can that I put in the radiator and voila it didn’t smoke all the way to work. InshaAllah it stays that way although the scary red “Check Engine” light is still on. So now that my car was fixed it was providence to attend this funeral.

The sister who passed away was old, probably in her 60s or 70s. She had come here with her husband and sons a number of years ago from let’s say Bakhome-istan. The family owned a local ‘quicki mart store’ in our community and she sometimes worked there along with her husband who was there everyday. Her gnarled old hands rung up the items one by one and she never spoke a word of English. He too unfortunately is in the hospital right now and probably won’t recover. Her sons are grown and one lived there above the store with his family and kids and I think they lived there as well. The store is not in the best part of town but it is across the street from our inner city Masjid so got brisk business. It was probably the first time in history that the windows were darkened and the shop was closed up.

The Janazah had maybe a little over 100 people who came. A handful of family, 2 grandkids, some ppl from their country, some kids who came over from the school who had the grandkids in their classes, some who got the email from the listserv about a Janazah today. The service after Asr was very short. They brought the body in a white glossy coffin. We prayed the 4 Takbeerat and then it was over. They lifted her up and took her back to the hearst and most of the men went out with it. They plan to send the body back to her home to be buried.

I wrapped up and went back to my car around 7 and drove home alone.

I found this to be the saddest saddest funeral I’ve ever attended. A woman who traveled so far from her homeland in the hopes of a better life for her children and her children’s children. Who still are struggling and visibly hovering above poverty. I mean what did they come here for? I see so many of these struggling immigrants especially nowadays up here and especially in places like New York city. Anonymous, androgynous, working working middle class, barely scraping a living, their kids half way cultural half way in the shadows. Friendless but trying so hard to stick with their cultural kind. Praying regularly in the inner-city mosque. And now she’s dead and being sent back to her country to be buried.

What does it all mean? What did her life mean?
I don’t know. May Allah have mercy upon her soul and enter her into Jannatul firdous. Ameen.