Her story to tell
About ten years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and my eyes were swollen because I had been crying during my sleep. When I woke up, I had this strange feeling that I needed to say something. Subhanallah. It was really strange because I immediately ran to search for a paper and a pen, and I started writing.
When I looked at the piece of paper afterwards I realised I had written something about a young woman. A Palestinian who had lost her only child. As I felt so anxious and stressful so I had left the piece of paper on my desk. I didn’t know what to do with myself. In the following days, after that night, I started writing more.
I decided to contact a friend of mine at that time and I told her, what had happened. I told her about the story and that I wanted to make something out of it. I needed to share this story that was inside of me. It was really weird, but subhanallah, that friend understood what I was saying. God bless her. Together we finished the story and we made a theater piece out of it and eventually organised an artistic benefit for orphans in Palestine.
We worked very hard on that piece to finalize it and to try to tell a story that wasn’t ours to tell, and yet tell it in a vulnerable way, in a way that could still be truthful. It was, one of the most heartbreaking, projects to work on.
وَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِۚ وَكَفَىٰ بِٱللَّهِ وَكِيلٗا
And rely upon Allah; and sufficient is Allah as Disposer of affairs.
Surah Al Ahzab Ayat 3
No manzil left
When we look at the reality today, so many children in Palestine are left without parents, and so many parents are left without their children. It really saddens me to see that we still live in a place where awful things like this can happen, where human beings can look at the cruelty and keep their eyes shut, keep their mouths shut just because it’s convenient for them, either for political reasons or for their beliefs, or for whatever messed up reason it is.
If you look at the humanity of things, we shouldn’t act the way we act. I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that a literal genocide is happening and it’s still happening and nothing is done about it. I’m literally speechless because I don’t know what to say. Being so powerless as a fellow human being, as a fellow Muslim, as a woman, as a sister. It’s heartbreaking. It scares me to one day raise children in a world where cruelty like this happens without action being taken.
I think I just want to share, a little piece of the theater that we created ten years ago. It’s the part where the mother speaks to her daughter that passed away. She was a three year old and her name was Amani.
“Amani, Amani
Ana oehibouk, ya Amani.
I love you, my sweet Amani
The days are filled with heavy sorrow and
the night wears a cloak of general obscurity.
Confused I stare before me
Searching for a distinction,
between the two.
Yet with time,
standing still for days
the realization creeps in
little by little.
I am lost in the gnawing silent darkness.
Amani, Amani
Ana oehibouk, ya Amani
I love you, my sweetest Amani
Time is at a standstill
the beating of my heart has lost its rhythm.
The disorder around us stiffens me,
quite literally invades me.
I pull myself up
to that last bit of hope.
The hope of our reunion,
My sorrow is burdend by your repulsive blood shed.
Tears lead a life of their own, uncontrollably and inconsolably
My throat stiffens, suffocating till the end.
Sightless I gaze out before me
Through what surrounds me,
No more than a happy memory.
Amani, Amani
Ana oehiboek, ya Amani
I love you, my darling angel.
I no longer breathe
Live only from the memory of your being.
I no longer live,
Yet,
I hope.”
ٱلسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ ٱللَّٰهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ