Alive
Friday, August 24, 2007, life was breathed into me once again. This wasn’t in the Emergency or any medical institution. This happened right on my dining room table, plugged into my laptop listening to the Qur’an while reading the English translation.
You see, for 31 years, 10 months and 5 days, I was nothing more than a dead soul in a living body. Although I was born and raised Muslim, and Arabic was my mother tongue – I had never once opened the Qur’an to read, nor had I listened with any understanding. I was illiterate and ignorant.
I went through the motions as we are taught to do, pray, fast, stay away from haram but it meant nothing because my heart was dead. It drank from the Dunya from an early age and drowned with music, movies and an insatiable thirst for life, yet I was not living.
University degree, car, spouse, 2 kids, my own business, and even had a nanny too but my life what devoid of happiness, devoid of any fulfillment. So I wandered and stumbled till that one fateful night, when my spouse said “I’m leaving, I’ve found my true love”. I can still hear the sound of my heart breaking. The pain in my chest echoed the breaking of my heart.
That was 5 days before I was breathed in with life. I lay numb and ill and sad and confused.
Then I pulled myself together and said to myself, “you’ve read every book about marriage and love, perhaps it is time to read the words of Allah.”
That Friday I cried like never before. In the pages of the Qur’an, I found the pieces of my life. It was as if I was deaf, dumb and blind and suddenly all my senses became alive. Even as I recall this, I am brought back to tears. He could have left me lost… but He gifted me Islam.
The darkness diminished and in my heart there was light, and despite the fact that it was still broken, there was a serenity in it that I could not understand.
Listening while reading the English translation became my daily addiction. I could not function without my fix.
I lost the love of a man but found the love of Allah.
And I’ve lived happily ever after from that moment on.