Asalam U Alaykum wa Rehmat ul lahi Wa Barakatuhu
Dear Baba,
Insha Allah this letter will find you patient and strong and in the light of Allah’s good graces. Please offer my warmest greetings to Abba, Boaba, and the family. I pray for their well being. May Allah bless you all.
It is the 35th day and with today’s sundown, the 36th day will start with more braveness and endurance. It is all because you have taught me the lessons of true faith and audacity.
I keep avoiding your queries which have traumatized me. It is because I am afraid that knowing the things happening before and after may break you and your hopes. Every day I tell you of hope and now it is me who is telling you not to be hopeful for tomorrow or day after tomorrow.
Be hopeful with faith. Allah is with us. Don’t panic about our return. When the right time will come, you’ll find me before your eyes. I talked to Azaan before some time and my eyes are flooded on what he said. He told me, “Azkee peth padh bu Namaaz pat waen Khoda sobas Arbeeni sozun ghar jaldi.” (From today, I’ll offer Namaaz and pray for your early return.) I just smiled a little more and said that he is best in his efforts for me. I have always confined myself but today I want to open up.
Baba, I need you the way oceanic waves need moon and moon needs the sky. I long for my family and everyone who is desperately waiting and praying for my return. As Azaan understood and I wish everyone will. Allah is the Master who can help us. When we can find no roads and rails, when all hopes are gone, He is there. Verily He makes ways out of nowhere. Allahu’Akbar.
I don’t deny the fact that we too have to play our part. No, I never did. We did whatever was in our hands. We went on hunger strikes, sleep strikes even. The officials who came here were with only one sentence which has become our quarantine dialogue now, “Hamaaray haath main khuch nahin.”(Nothing is in our hands). We talked to every person who is into it but everyone gave us one and the other excuse. Some people come and tell us that we’re like their children when it comes to water the fire in our eyes but there are people, most of them, who’ve become cannibals. They’re hostile – the sold ones. They have auctioned their souls and faith to the merciless vendors of the nation. They can never be at peace. May Almighty help them out. Aameen.
Ramadhan is coming and my soul is becoming restless now. Because Ramadhan is not only about fasting. It is a month full of Mercy and Blessings. May Almighty bring us home before it starts.
Baba, we have everything here but not peace. We are not living any luxurious life here, it’s quarantine, thousand miles away from home. If we don’t eat individually, no one will come and take us for meals. If we’ll die no one will care. People will get to rumours about it. There’s no one at the end of the day, we’re alone. Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was always just red. Had it been home, it would’ve been another story because Home quarantine means that Home is there, where there’s peace. The place where the heart is.
But we don’t get to choose what we get. Life just brings miseries and teaches either how to go with them or how to succumb. It depends on our calibre. One can take advantage of these calamitous epochs also. Be it from inside or outside, one can learn to have faith, to be brave and strong enough to see the miracles happen. We all have to stand in these storms like big trees, even if all our leaves fall and all our branches break. Our roots should remain. Broken can become beautiful again and leaves can re-grow with coming springs but if roots come off, whole soma will desiccate.
There will be no sign of us if the shocks reach our roots. So let us be strong and sober in these hard times. Tell these wanton storms that we’re the believers, the best of His creations. Humans with strength.
I wish and pray that on the commencement of the holy month of Ramadhan we all are with our families and in these hard times we find some peace.
May Allah bless and protect the whole humanity and may we be forgiven.
Allahu’Akbar.
Was-salam ma al-ikraam.
Your Loving Daughter.
Arbeena Altaf Bhat
Pursuing MBBS in SUMS, Iran.
