17/7/2028 17:54 – National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes (NCAVC), Conference Room 

This glass skin of mine shatters and distorts beneath the scrutinizing gaze of my audience. I sit there, frozen, uncomfortable and dissociated. They watch my every move, like a rat in a maze; every twitch of my eyes, every hesitant turn, observed and judged. And I’m left to wonder if there is any hope at all. I swore this time I would break free, but here I am, stagnant, proving to myself that habits don’t break after a desperate cry for help. That a man’s words in the darkest period of his life don’t change anything. How he will forget you, just like it was always meant to be. 

A historian once shared a profound truth: details of legendary discoveries were often lost in the mundane. How exactly, 45 letters after his cousin’s, did the king decide enough is enough, only to declare war again and ruin his entire country and reputation? How did the not-so-silent cat of the next-door serial killer inadvertently lead the police to its owner’s grim secrets? 

How did I write 99 and a half journal entries, each dated for a future I pray to see beyond the walls of this mental asylum? 

I’m left frozen in the cold block of this white room suffocating me. I send a silent prayer that its oppressive weight smothers the adults in their doctor costumes. That they, too, feel as uneasy as I do.

“Miss Anna, please write your full name and sign here.”

I grip the pen like it’s the final puzzle piece of my not-so-mundane life and sign a signature I make up on the spot. How could they know what’s real and what’s not? All I have to do is keep up this act until the end. My final act won’t be inside these cursed walls.

A bitter smile tugs at my lips, threatening to betray what I really feel. 

“When will I be discharged, doctor?” 

The word sits like bile on my tongue. I could be his senior, or his senior’s senior. Yet here I am, forced to call him “doctor.”

He purses his lips and squints, his demeanour reeking of distrust and arrogance, a dangerous mixture for a man who claims he’s here to help.

“We still need some more time.”

I squint back, challenging what’s left of his borrowed authority. “I don’t have time, young man. Nor do I have the patience to let the government treat me like some kind of lab rat.”

My eyes scan the room. No visible exits. A nurse at every corner. You’d think I held the secrets of the universe with how tightly they’re guarding this cage. I feel like an animal at the zoo—used, displayed, no longer trusted to function outside my box. 

Except I’m not a wild animal that needs to be tamed, just an influential doctor who dared to speak the truth.

“Of course, Miss Anna. We wouldn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. All of these procedures are entirely consensual and for the good of our nation. It’s both an honor for me and my team to work alongside incredible geniuses like yourself.” 

I let out a breathless laugh. He refuses to call me by my hard-earned title, yet still expects me to believe he sees me as anything other than a burden. One he most definitely wishes to eliminate at the earliest convenience.

“It’s Doctor Anna,” my voice is flat. I’m not going to give him the reaction he wants. “Your so-called ‘honour to work alongside me’ doesn’t make sense when you can’t even address me by my proper academic title.” 

They are not even hiding it anymore. I truly expected better from the so-called “top tier psychology researchers” that the government needs me to work with so badly. If I could even call this “work” and not a social experiment that feels more like a trap. 

His tight smile falters, then stretches even further. A thin, brittle line. I wouldn’t have known he was fazed  if it hadn’t been for the pulsed vein on the side of his neck.

I must have hit a nerve. Good. This is payback for how they threw me into this three-day mess of interrogations. I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no phone or smart gadgets to communicate with the outside world. The poor book talk and signing event coordinator must be in shambles. 

I still remember poor sweet Jamila’s brown eyes widening with shock when the group of strong men in suits grabbed me after the event, in order to “chat” about how my book, The Psychology of Dictators, drew the attention of the government. How could it not? At least 10 major protests were ignited within the first month of its release and hundreds of thousands flooded the streets to rise up against our dictator. That kind of unity was only seen back in the 1900s, when our country gained its independence. 

I should have run away when I had the chance. But this “doctor” wasn’t going to let me go that easily, I had little option but to comply. He wouldn’t be heartless enough to kill me, right? If he did, he could have done it a long time ago.

My gaze searches the room, looking for  anything warmer than the ice cold energy I feel from the fake smiles and tense silence around me. Nothing here feels like the career path I fell in love with. A small nurse, one who hasn’t yet uttered a single word, but has been a constant presence since I arrived at this hellhole, looks me up and down with a feeling I can’t quite place. Is it pity? Or…

Before I can analyze her even further, the look disappears, faster than it had appeared. The door creaks open and a new face enters. Another crisp white uniform, in the sea of stiff and rigid routine. She’s holding a brown envelope, one I’ve seen way too many times. “Standard procedure,” they call it—as if anything in this place is “standard.” But as she steps into the light, my breath catches in my throat, and my heart sinks to my stomach.

It is her eyes. I’ll never forget those eyes.

The same brilliant, shocking brown, now drained of every shade that once made them human. The same eyes that had widened at my book signing—the very eyes I, the fool, had mistaken for horror. For solidarity. For anything real.

“Jamila?” The name crawls out of me like something I should have buried a long time ago.

She looks up. No flinch. No flicker. The warm, expressive brown of the event coordinator I remembered has been gutted and replaced with something clinical. This is something else. Something dehumanising.

“Hello, Doctor Anna,” she says, her voice smooth as glass. “It’s time for your interview reporting.”

And in that moment, the final, horrifying piece of the puzzle clicks into place. The friendly coordinator, the convenient government interest, the perfectly timed abduction. It wasn’t a coincidence. The person I had trusted, whose innocent face was my last memory of freedom, had been part of it all along. She hadn’t been a witness to my downfall. She is one of its moving pieces.

He had been planning this from the start. I should have known just how cruel he could be. 

 17/7/2028 21:32 – National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes (NCAVC), Residential Room

The clock is moving at a painfully slow crawl, the silence even more dreadful than the wait. My roommate is thankfully still absent, granting me a precious window to journal the remaining sanity I’ve been holding on to since I returned to my glass cage. 

My fingers close around the only treasure I’ve ever possessed–the last link I have of my twin brother from that dreadful orphanage, the bittersweet ghost of his former self, when he was simply my brother and not the shadow he’d since become. It still haunts the edges of my memory—the only trauma I refuse to face. I’m supposed to wrap up the remaining interviews tomorrow and begin discussions of me being discharged from this unit. 

Again. 

Two days. 

That’s all the time I’m supposed to spend as an experienced analyst in the department for corrupt, high-profile criminals. Yet, from the moment I stepped through these doors, a pervasive, unsettling hyper-aware team has been following me. I’m certain they’re not just watching the criminals. 

A doctor, Doctor Layla, has been assigned as my roommate. Agreeing to pretend to be a patient in order to understand these criminals’ minds should have been the first red flag, yet I feel less like I have an option and more like I’m being coerced into believing I have less control than I really do. From an early age I was really good at beating games where I was at a disadvantage; I loved proving everyone wrong. And this time, I won’t be any different. 

I groaned softly as I stretched after climbing down from the weathered jeep. The long drive up into the mountains from the airport in Islamabad had worked its way deep into my bones. For a moment I simply stood there at the outskirts of my village, listening to the wind move gently through the trees overhead.

Coming home after so many years felt less like returning to a place and more like stepping back into a memory—tree branches arched lazily overhead, uneven stone paths worn smooth by generations of footsteps, the faint scents of pine and wood smoke drifting through the mountains.

I often wondered whether my memories had dulled with age, but standing there looking down at our valley, I found everything exactly as I remembered it—the quiet beneath the trees, the houses in the village radiating outward from the masjid, and the village’s teacher, Ustaadh Ji’s workshop next to it. From where I stood, I could see his weathered wooden door, propped open like it always was in the afternoons, letting in the alpine breeze.

Seeing it pulled me deeper into memory. Everyone in our village greeted him with warmth and respect, for almost all of them had once studied under his gentle tutelage. More than once each year, the entire village would gather in celebration when another of his students completed reading the Qur’an from beginning to end for the first time, the young reader’s voice trembling with both nervousness and pride while Ustaadh Ji listened with the calm satisfaction of a gardener watching a tree he had planted finally bear fruit.

I remembered my own khatam day. I had sat cross-legged before Ustaadh Ji in the masjid, my small finger pointing at the page, trembling as I read the final verses. As the last words finally left my lips, the room erupted with cheers and prayers. I remember Ustaadh Ji pulling me tightly against his chest after he placed a topi embroidered in gold thread on my head–his gift to every boy who finished reading the Qur’an from end-to-end—his face radiant with the same quiet pride I had seen him offer so many students before me.

I remembered my father. The way his eyes shone as he hugged me before pressing a crisp thousand-rupee note into my palm while the other men of the village laughed, congratulated him, and slapped his back in celebration.

Smiling to myself, I made my way slowly through the village streets, passing stone walls softened by time and small groups of elders seated beneath the shade, their conversations carrying lazily through the mountain air. Somewhere nearby, meat sizzled inside the walls of a clay oven while children darted between the narrow paths with the same restless energy I remembered from my own youth.

Nestled in the shadow of Pakistan’s northern peaks, beneath low-hanging clouds, a narrow lane lined with apricot trees led down from the main road into the village. I had just begun walking along it when I heard the call to prayer begin, drifting softly across the valley and pulling me into yet another memory.

​​Few in the village could remember a time before Ustaadh Ji’s door had stood open to all of us children. For decades he had sat in that same sunlit room, guiding small, uncertain hands through their first letters—alif, ba, ta—until the shapes that once felt foreign began to flow naturally from the reed. Entire generations had passed across that woven mat before him.

It had been so long since my last visit. While my own life had become consumed by distance and noise, this village had remained here enduring quietly beneath the mountains, carrying on without me. I found myself wondering how much of it I had failed to preserve simply by being gone.

With every step, the years between my leaving and returning seemed to loosen their hold on me. Familiar sounds began rising gently from the village like echoes surfacing from deep water—the distant bleating of goats along the hillside, the creak of wooden shutters shifting in the breeze, the faint murmur of Qur’an recitation drifting from the direction of the masjid courtyard.

As I arrived in the village center, I passed my family’s home without stopping and continued instead toward the masjid. Only later would I realize that something within me had already begun searching for Ustaadh Ji long before I consciously intended to. When I finally reached his workshop and peered through the open door, everything was exactly as it always had been, as though time itself had simply passed around it.

Afternoon light slanted through high windows, falling in bars of gold and shadow across the stone floor. Dust motes drifted lazily in the warm air, rising with each subtle movement and settling again as if the room itself were breathing. In the corner, seated cross-legged on a woven mat, was our Ustaadh. His white beard caught the light like frost on a winter branch, and his hands—veined and weathered over the decades—moved with a precision that belied his age.

Before him lay a small bundle of reeds, cut to equal length, their yellow-brown husks catching the light. Beside them was a single piece of paper, a clay pot of black liquid that shone like obsidian, and a small wooden box no bigger than a loaf of bread.

The blade whispered softly against the reed. Slice. Pause. Turn. Another careful cut. Each movement was deliberate, unhurried, as though the reed itself had a rhythm that Ustaadh Ji was listening for.

As I waited, my mind wandered to the peaceful rhythm of life here. The smell of fresh roti drifted from clay ovens through the village’s stone walkways, mingling softly with pine and woodsmoke in the mountain air. From somewhere high above the village came the piercing cry of a Shaheen falcon as it announced itself with a scream before dropping into a sharp dive.

I had read somewhere that they could live for nearly twenty years, and I found myself wondering if this was the same one I had watched soaring above our home when I was a child. I remembered afternoons spent sitting on a large rocky outcrop just outside the village with my friends, our legs dangling over the edge as we watched the valley below, cheering when we spotted the lethal bird streaking across the sky like an arrow. We would point wildly towards the sky, arguing over who had seen it first, our bickering carrying into the wind.

Dust tickled my nose, interrupting my reverie, and I watched as another shaving curled away from the reed and floated gently downward, landing soundlessly among the others on the folded cloth.

Watching him work, I became suddenly aware of how clumsy my own hands were. Even the stillness of the room seemed disciplined in a way I was not. I had arrived, carrying years of distance and noise inside me. For years my days had been measured in schedules, traffic, and glowing screens, and now watching Ustaadh Ji work in peace, I felt all of it evaporate at once.

Ustaadh Ji did not look up.

I remained where I was, leaning lightly against the wooden frame of his doorway, watching. And after a while, the waiting itself became peacefully comfortable. The small sounds of the room began to settle into a quiet pattern: the faint rasp of the blade, the soft fall of another shaving, the slow creak of the woven mat as he shifted his weight. Without realizing it, I found myself breathing more slowly, matching the gentle cadence of his work.

Only when the reed had finally taken the shape he wanted, did Ustaadh Ji pause. He set the blade down beside him and turned his head slightly toward me.

“So,” he said, as though I had just arrived. “You have finally returned. I’d wondered if you’d forgotten about us. ”

As he spoke, his fingers continued to move carefully, deliberately picking up each shaving fragment, examining it and placing it carefully into the wooden box, where it joined the remnants of many past reeds.

Unable to hold my curiosity, I asked, “Ustaadh Ji… what are you doing? And why are you keeping the shavings?”

He paused, looked up, and smiled the way a grandfather smiles at a child asking why the stars twinkle. His eyes were deep and soft, reflecting the light of the window like pools of calm water.

“Ah,” he said, turning the reed in his hand, “you have noticed.”

He lifted one of the shavings with the tip of his blade and held it to the light. It was thin as a strand of saffron, curling naturally into a tiny spiral.

“Every calligrapher who wanders this path,” he said, “knows that the qalam is not merely a tool. It is a witness. It is the bridge between the soul and the page. With it, we write the words of the Almighty, the poetry of civilizations, and the names of those who will be remembered long after our bones are dust.

“These shavings…” he gestured to the cloth, “…are a testament of that work. Each curl fell as I prepared the instrument to bear something sacred. One day, these shavings will rest with me in the earth. They will one day whisper that I once served as a scribe in devotion to the Almighty.”

He reached for the wooden box, its lid carved with a simple geometric pattern of interlocking squares. Opening it, he revealed hundreds of tiny shavings layered like pressed flowers, each one a silent fragment of time.

“This is many years of pens,” he said softly. “Every qalam I have cut, every single one that I have used, every mistake, every perfection. All saved, for when I return to the One who gave me these hands and these eyes. We will go together, the qalam and I, and these shavings will one day bear witness that I did not waste the gift.”

I said nothing. My chest tightened with the unspoken weight of him leaving us—a heaviness I prayed I would never have to name.

For as long as I could remember, that room had seemed as permanent as the mountains beyond the valley. The thought that the mat might one day lie empty, the blade resting silent beside untouched reeds, felt almost impossible to hold in my mind. It was difficult, imagining that the workshop could exist without him in it. 

I had allowed myself to live as though it always would. Years had passed between my visits while I buried myself in the noise of another life, deceived by the foolish certainty that men like Ustaadh Ji would simply always be waiting where I had left them. Sitting there now, watching his weathered hands gather the shavings into that small wooden box, I felt the quiet shame of realizing how much I had taken his presence for granted.

I watched him place another shaving carefully into the box, and for the first time since returning, I understood that my longing to remain near him was not merely nostalgia. Somewhere within me was the growing fear that I had already spent too many years away from the things that truly mattered. The village would always be here, but would he?

I watched him in silence for a few moments before I finally found the courage to speak.

“Ustaadh Ji…” I said quietly. “Would you teach me?”

For several moments he said nothing. I watched as his thumb drifted along the lid of the box, tracing the small nicks and imperfections time had carved into it, as though he remembered the story behind every single one.

“Why?” he asked at last, setting the box down.

The question caught me unprepared.

“Because it is beautiful,” I answered.

He gave a faint smile, though his eyes remained fixed on the box as he set it down.

“Beauty alone is not enough. The world is already full of beautiful things.” He gestured to the door with his head as he picked up his qalam and turned it gently between his fingers. “Many admire our art. But few are willing to surrender themselves to it.”

The room fell quiet again except for the distant murmur of wind outside the workshop.

“This craft,” he continued softly, “demands patience from the impatient, humility from the proud, and discipline from the restless. The qalam records all of it. Every trembling hand. Every hurried line. Every moment the heart wanders from its intention.”

He looked toward the wooden box beside him.

“And if you learn it properly, then one day its preservation will also become your responsibility. You will carry it the way others carried it before you.”

His gaze settled on me then, calm and searching.

“Tell me honestly,” he asked, “are you prepared to serve something that may never reward you except in silence?”

I lowered my eyes, suddenly aware that I did not truly know the answer.

And perhaps seeing that uncertainty in me, Ustaadh Ji finally nodded.

“Good,” he said softly. “A man who answers without thinking has not understood the weight of the question.”

Then, at last—“Come,” he said, gesturing for me to step closer. I knelt beside him, the mat rough beneath my knees. The faint smell of ink and dried reeds filled my nose, strangely calming.

He held up the reed he had just cut. Its tip was wide and flat, a chisel ready for work.

“Do you know why we shape the qalam this way?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Kufic,” he said, and the word itself seemed to settle into the room like a stone in a still pond. “The oldest of our scripts. It was born in Kufa, by the river, where the call to prayer echoed through the desert. It speaks with strength and silence. The horizontal stroke is the earth beneath your feet. And the vertical stroke is the finger that testifies to the heavens. To write Kufic is to erect a monument on the page. A weak pen will betray the letters, so we cut the qalam with care. Its strength becomes the strength of the letters.”

I looked at the reed in his hand. Until that moment, I had only seen a tool. Now it felt almost sacred.

He dipped the reed into the ink and drew a slow horizontal line across the page. It was perfectly even, thick and confident. He then rotated the nib slightly and drew a vertical stroke, slim and sharp as a sword.

“You see,” he said, “Kufic is not written. It is built. Crafted. It is a constructed city of letters, and every letter is a pillar. When I write, I am building gates, courtyards, and walls. The letters stand with each other. They breathe together.”

He ran his thumb gently along the reed. “But this is true of more than calligraphy.”

He gestured faintly toward the village beyond the window. “Our life is built the same way. Carefully and patiently. One line,” he drew a line on the page, “beside another. One generation beside the next. Your grandfather laid a stone, your father raised a wall, and perhaps you will only be entrusted with repairing a doorway before your own hands grow old.”

I felt suddenly small hearing him speak that way—not diminished, but humbled. I had spent so much of my life thinking about what I might build for myself that I had never once considered the dignity of simply preserving what had already been entrusted to me.

His words settled heavily inside me as I stared at the page, at the two lines he had drawn. They already looked like foundations.

-v-

Over the next weeks, I returned to the workshop every day, stepping over the same threshold worn smooth by years of students passing through. Ustaadh Ji’s workshop was a place of tranquil discipline. The morning light always crossed through the windows the same way, allowing me to settle into the quiet familiarity of the room before our lesson began.

At first, I only observed as Ustaadh Ji’s hands moved with ritual precision: soaking reeds to soften them, cutting nibs at careful angles, testing the ink’s thickness on scraps of paper. He explained that Kufic is not for those in haste. It requires a mind emptied of noise. Discipline and patience are virtues held dear by its practitioners.

For all its stillness, the room awakened my senses: the sound of reed shavings being brushed aside, the way Ustaadh Ji tested a nib on a scrap of paper, his habit of tapping the qalam gently against the ink pot, and even the smell of ink thickening in the afternoon warmth.

As Ustaadh Ji’s rhythms became familiar, I began to help with small tasks around the workshop.

I would carefully sweep his reed shavings into a small pile at the far corner of his mat. I’d place fresh paper beside him while carefully mixing the ink with water to his preferred texture and consistency.

As the days turned into weeks and I continued to return without fail, he began to trust me with his knife, one that had been gifted to him by his own teacher many years earlier. I took great pride in honing the blade to a razor-sharp edge and laying it beside a pile of fresh reeds waiting for him to begin crafting every time.

“Each letter is an invocation,” he’d explain as he worked. “If your hand is restless, the letter will wobble. If your heart is heavy, the line will falter. The qalam feels everything you feel. You cannot hide from it.”

One morning, he let me cut my first reed. I held the small blade awkwardly, conscious of his eyes on my hands. The first slice was too deep, the second uneven. A jagged shaving fell onto the mat.

“Keep it,” he said, picking it up and placing it on the cloth. “Mistakes are part of the journey. This fragment will testify that your hand was learning.”

He then adjusted my grip, rotating the reed slightly in my hand. “Again,” he ordered, not unkindly.

By the end of that week, I had a small pile of shavings beside me. My lines were crooked, pillars faltered, and my horizontals slanted like tired walls.

I remember staring at the ruined tip in my hands, embarrassed by how quickly they had betrayed me. What had looked effortless in Ustaadh Ji’s hands now seemed impossibly delicate. I was beginning to understand that perfection was not born from talent alone, but from a discipline I did not yet possess.

But Ustaadh Ji only nodded. “Kufic is patient,” he said. “It has endured for centuries. It will wait for you.”

Months passed. Shadows lengthened across the workshop floor, and the air grew cooler, heralding autumn. What was meant to be a brief visit home had stretched far beyond my original plans. The demands of my other life lingered somewhere beyond the mountains, distant enough to feel almost imaginary. Each morning, I found myself drawn back to Ustaadh Ji’s workshop as though some deeper part of me already understood that this time together would not come again.

One afternoon, almost as if by accident, Ustaadh Ji wordlessly reached for a reed I had cut instead of preparing one himself. He tested the nib against the paper once, then nodded almost imperceptibly before continuing his work. That small gesture filled me with a pride I carried for weeks.

And within all of this persisted the quiet ritual of the art: the scent of reed and ink, the soft sound of the knife, the stillness that wrapped around each session like a cloak. I had since acquired my own small wooden box to carry back with me when I eventually returned abroad, and I watched my own pile of shavings grow with each session. I was learning that Kufic was not merely an art, but a discipline.

One evening, as the sun sank and the workshop turned amber with fading light, I watched as Ustaadh Ji placed the remnants of that day’s work carefully into his wooden box. I thought of the hundreds that lay there already, remnants of a life spent in devotion.

“Ustaadh Ji,” I said, “when you are gone, who will continue the city you have built?”

The qalam rested lightly between his fingers. “Most people think legacy is something grand. A monument. A name carved into marble. But often it is quieter. A discipline passed from one hand to another. A verse remembered correctly. A craft preserved long enough for another soul to inherit it.”

He looked down at the page again. “That is why we honor our qalam. Without it, the city cannot exist. And when my hand is gone, perhaps the city will still stand, but these small pieces,” he gestured toward the wooden box, “and I will rest together, satisfied with what we helped build.”

He looked at me, his smile gentle. “Perhaps you will continue it,” he said. “Perhaps not. The city does not belong to me. It belongs to the Almighty. I am but His servant.”

Then he placed the reed in my hand. “Cut,” he said.

The room fell quiet as we worked, though the silence wasn’t empty. There was simply nothing more to say. Later that afternoon, I shook his hand and made my way back to my family’s home, but his words lingered in my ears long into the night.

-v-

Many years later, in my study on the other side of the world, I reflected as I whittled my next qalam, Ustaadh Ji’s knife resting familiarly in my hand. He had gifted it to me during one of our last lessons together. I remember holding my breath as he’d handed it to me.

“My own teacher gave this to me,” he had said quietly, almost reverently.

Only later did I realize that the knife would never truly belong to either of us. We were both mere caretakers, each entrusted by our Ustaads with a brief moment to lay another stone for those who would come after us.

Even now, whenever my blade would begin its slow work, I’d sometimes feel as though I could hear the faint rasp of another blade beside mine, as though the quiet of his workshop still lingered somewhere in the rhythm of my craft. I’d occasionally find myself wondering how many other hands across the valley still remember the patience he taught us.

Somewhere behind me, I heard footsteps pause briefly at the doorway of my study, but I did not look up immediately. This reed was not yet ready.

A final curl fell into my own box of shavings on the desk. The small wooden box beside my hand was beginning to resemble the one I had first noticed resting beside his mat so many years before.

I exhaled deeply as my qalam met the page, the first stroke rising like a minaret against the open sky. In that quiet moment, Ustaadh Ji’s lessons returned to me:

“Each letter, a monument. Each stroke, a supplication.”

aching soul,

restless,

mind never quite at ease

grief takes its home

in between

the flesh

of my ribs

there it stays,

lodged

and unmoving

like a pebble in the sole of the shoe

it never truly leaves

never lets my soul breathe

or even come up for air

it moves within me

like an ocean with a million currents

the waves constantly crashing at the shore

where all of life’s tragedies

come to surface

once more

where the vastness of these pains

travels across miles

flower fields of beauty

yet the sorrows stem deep

within the roots

they grow and grow

yet nobody sees them

nobody dares to touch the soil of one’s anguish

they remain afraid of muddying their hands

how repulsive this grief must be

how sickly of a creature I have become

and I continue to loathe in this mess,

uncertain of each step

every breath

the words stuck on the tip of my tongue

daring to spill out,

daring to tell anyone just how I feel

the burning desire

to be understood

the words stuck on the tip of my tongue

a fiery rage in my chest

and I now watch

in utter horror

as my own two hands

lead to my demise

the blade is at my throat,

threatening to cut

scar

damage

make me lose my breath

and choke on every emotion suppressed

here I stand

in the valleys of my grief

here I shall stay

in the pits of my despair

and for the sake of my sanity,

my head hits the floor

to speak to the Almighty above

in hopes He shall listen to me implore

“Harakah and Barakah, reporting for service!” Harakah announced.

He snapped to attention as the Senior Angel passed by, then eased back over the welcome counter the moment he was gone. Barakah, beside him, did not look up from the register.

“You don’t have to yell every time he walks by,” Barakah said.

“I’m not yelling. I’m practicing.”

“You’re yelling.”

They were Junior Angels, newly posted to the Welcome Gates of the Barzakh, the intermediate realm where souls await the Day of Judgment. They had grown up on stories of Jibril descending with revelation, of Mika’il dispatching rain to parched earth, of Harut and Marut and the magic trials of Babylon. They had memorized the names of the Warrior Angels at Badr, sent down with swords of light to fight alongside the human believers. Now it was their turn.

“Next!” Harakah called out, brightening. He waved with both wings.

Two sisters drifted to the front of the line, bright-eyed and a little dazed. The Attending Angels who’d handled their passage, carrying them gently upward through station after station, had done good work. They always did.

“Assalamu alaikum,” Harakah said, beaming. “May Allah have mercy on you both.”

“Wa alaykum assalam,” the sisters said in unison.
“It’s beautiful here,” the younger one said, looking around.

“Welcome to the Barzakh,” Harakah said. “There’s a sign over there if you want to read it. I gave feedback on the design!”

“His feedback was that the font was ‘too serious,'” Barakah said.

“Brother.”

“That was all of it.”

“And they made it less serious!” Harakah protested. “That’s feedback!”

The older sister laughed, bemused.

Barakah sighed. “Alright,” he said, smoothing the register. “Names?”

The sisters gave their names. Barakah found them on the day’s list and made a small notation: received in good standing. The page warmed faintly under his hand.

Harakah chatted with the sisters about the gardens that awaited them, about the breeze and fragrance of Paradise that would reach even here. Barakah laid down his pen and listened.

Before this, they had spent sixty years as the Recording Angels of the same human. Harakah on the right shoulder, writing good deeds. Barakah on the left, writing the rest. Their human had passed on a Tuesday, and they had been reassigned to the Welcome Gates the following morning. Harakah loved the new role. Barakah was still adjusting. He missed observing.

“Your gardens are ready when you are,” Barakah said, when there was a lull in the conversation. “But before you go, is there anyone living you’d like us to add to the Golden Register? The Supplicant Angels in the higher gardens make du’a for those listed there. Every dawn.”

The sisters looked at each other.

“Sarah,” the older one said. “From Masjid an-Noor. Could you add Sarah?”

“Of course.” Barakah wrote it down. “Tell us about her.”

“She always smiled at me. Even when I was new and didn’t know where to put my shoes.” The older sister was quiet for a moment, then said, “I didn’t realize until later that she was the one writing all those masjid emails I kept opening. The ones that read like a letter from a friend.”

“And her book,” the younger sister added. “My nephew read it so many times the cover started to peel. He fasted his first full Ramadan because of the girl in that book. He’s seven.”

“He’s so proud of himself,” the older sister reminisced.

Harakah was grinning. He looked at Barakah. Barakah was already looking at him.

“What?” the younger sister said. “Why are you both—”

“Nothing,” Barakah said quickly. “We’ll add her. Thank you for telling us about her. Du’as from this side travel fast.”

He closed the register. The sisters were gently directed toward the green path, where their gardens were waiting, and they went, already starting to talk about who they hoped to see first.

When they were out of earshot, Harakah turned to Barakah and grabbed him by both shoulders.

“BARAKAH.”

“I know.”

“BARAKAH IT’S HER.”

“Lower your wings, brother, everyone can see you—”

“It’s her, the one the Seniors keep telling us about, the one whose name keeps coming in—”

“I am aware,” Barakah said. “I have been writing her name down all morning—”

Harakah let go and did a small, giddy spin. A passing Senior Angel gave him a look. He composed himself, badly.

“Sorry. Sorry,” Harakah said. “I’m composed.”

“You are not composed.”

“I’m composed enough.”

The news that evening was that the Gathering Angels were going on a Pursuit.

The Pursuits were among the oldest angelic traditions: seeking and gathering around circles of knowledge, spoken of by the Prophet ﷺ himself. Harakah had been waiting his entire career to join one.

He dreamed of being chosen for the Laylat al-Qadr descent during the last ten nights of Ramadan, when the angels poured down in numbers no Junior Angel could conceive of. For now, this would do. He had practiced his entrance. There was a flourish involved.

He found Barakah in the registry hall and skidded to a halt at his desk. All heads turned.

“Pursuit!” he gasped. “Tonight. America. A circle of dhikr!“

“That’s nice.”

“Barakah.”

“That’s nice, Harakah.”

“They’re discussing the Barzakh. It’s a writing exercise. They’re imagining letters from the dead.”

Barakah set down his pen.

“And?”

“And she’s there.”

Barakah paused, mulling it over. Then he nodded. “Stay close to the group,” he said. “We’re guests on this one.”

“I will be the model guest!” Harakah exclaimed.

“You will not be the model guest.”

“I will be a guest.”

They walked out together, passing through the long colonnade that ran from the registry hall to the open sky. A hush settled as they walked. The light had begun to thin toward the evening horizon, gold and low.

Along the walls knelt the Prostrating Angels, lost in worship since the heavens and the earth were made. They had never once risen.

At the far end of the colonnade, in a recess of his own, stood Israfil. His lips were on the Trumpet. His gaze had not moved from the Throne since the day he was given his charge. He was waiting for the Swoon Order, the breath at which all in the heavens and the earth would swoon, the breath that would signal the Day of Resurrection. Harakah lowered his eyes as they passed, the way he had been taught. Barakah’s were already lowered.

When they were past, Barakah glanced at him.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

They spread their wings and joined the others at the rendezvous: a long elegant V of angels already assembling. They fell in at the back as the V crossed the thinning veil. The Barzakh opened behind them and America came up to meet them: its highways, its strip malls, its quiet houses.

The V descended and slipped, weightless, into a small living room with mismatched chairs. The young Muslims inside were sitting in a loose circle, murmuring among themselves. And there, near the back, with her legs tucked under her, was Sarah.

Harakah’s wings thrummed so hard he had to sit on them. Barakah smiled.

The angels settled into the corners of the room, invisible, and listened. One by one, the youth shared what they imagined a loved one might write to them from the Barzakh. A grandmother. A father. A brother who died too young. The room was thick with longing.

Then it was Sarah’s turn. She looked down at her hands.

“I’m a convert,” she finally confessed, “and I don’t have anyone on the other side. So I… I don’t know what to write. I don’t think anyone’s over there making du’a for me.”

Harakah’s wings drooped.

The room said the right things. Someone reached over and squeezed her hand. Low whispers of insha’Allah and you’re in our du’as, sister. She smiled and nodded and folded her hands.

“Barakah,” Harakah pleaded.

“No.”

“I haven’t even—”

“No, Harakah.”

“Just a hint,” Harakah said. “A glimmer! A small sign! A breeze! A meaningful breeze.”

“You know the rules.”

“Do I have to follow the rules?”

“The rules are the rules. Remember Usayd ibn Hudayr?”

“The Prophet’s Companion, right?”

“The very one. He was reciting Surat al-Baqarah one night when his horse kept startling at his voice. He stopped, worried it might trample his young son Yahya. He looked up and saw what appeared to be lamps in the canopy, rising into the sky, until they disappeared.”

“The Listening Angels?”

“The Listening Angels. The Prophet ﷺ later told him, ‘Those were angels, drawn down to your voice. If you had kept reciting until dawn, the people would have seen them in the morning.'”

“That was close.”

“It was close. The Seniors still call it the ‘Lamps in the Canopy Incident.’ They use it to train every Junior who comes through. That is why we wait.”

“That’s not the same—”

“It is the same. The veil is a mercy. What you want to give her would not comfort her. She would spend the rest of her life looking for the lamps. And on the nights they did not come, she would wonder what she had done wrong.”

“She would spend the rest of her life comforted by it,” Harakah argued.

Barakah looked at him. His face was kind.

“Brother. She will know. Insha’Allah. When it is her turn at the Gate, she will see her register, every name and every dawn accounted for. We will hand her the golden envelopes ourselves, sealed with the du’as of people she never knew were praying for her. Be patient. We sat on our human’s shoulders for sixty years. We can be patient now.”

Harakah folded his wings. He folded them very dramatically.

They stayed until the gathering ended. They followed her home, the other angels peeling off above them. They watched her perform wudu and pray three rak’ahs of witr, her final prayer before sleep, and then they watched her sit on her prayer mat with her hands open, and they listened.

She made du’a for her colleagues. She made du’a for the kids who had read her book. She made du’a for the cousin who had not spoken to her since she became Muslim. She made du’a for her birds. And she made du’a for two sisters she had heard about that morning, taken too soon in an accident.

With each du’a, Harakah and Barakah whispered ameen.

She made du’a for everyone except herself.

Back at the Welcome Gates, Harakah went around making sure everything was in order. He adjusted the sign he had given feedback on. When he looked up, he noticed Barakah had taken out the register and opened to a new page.

“What are you doing?” Harakah asked.

“The Du’a Edict. You know the one.”

Harakah did know the one. Every angel did. Whoever makes du’a for his brother in his absence, the angel appointed to him says: And to you the same. It was older than them, older than time itself.

“Every name she said,” Barakah said. “Returned to her own line.”

Harakah was quiet.

“Returned to her own line,” he repeated softly. Then: “Hand me a pen.”

Barakah handed him a pen. Harakah pulled up a chair.

“Move over,” Harakah said.

“There’s room.”

“I want to do the colleagues. You do the kids.”

“Fine.”

“And the birds. I’m doing the birds.”

“You can do the birds.”

The page filled slowly. The first lamps of dawn began to appear.

“There you will have whatever your souls desire,
and there you will have whatever you ask for.”

is Jannah as sweet, 
without the triumph of making it there?
would the rest be blissful, 
without the toils of this world?

is justice fulfilling, 
without tyranny widespread?
is faith astounding,
if everyone simply has it?

isn’t it firmer, 
as it stands against doubt?
isn’t it brighter, 
in the darkness that it shines through?

Yusuf’s rise brings wonder
because it was a rise,
so low in the well
then in pressure
then in prison
darkness after darkness
before everything comes to light
before everything becomes light.
“We relate to you the best of stories.” 

what are stories without conflict,
heroes without villains,
champions without struggle

great goodness combats great evil
great courage rises in face of great fear
great justice comes in return for great oppression

if i try to imagine
a life in Jannah
without having been here first
something feels incomplete
a piece missing.

“Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood, while we exalt You with praise and declare Your perfection?”

there is a particular loveliness in imperfection
in being a mess of a creation
in working day in and day out to overcome that messiness
just to get 
to Him.

“Indeed, I know that which you do not know.”

—-

1: Fussilat 41:31
2. Yusuf 12:3
3. Baqarah 2:30
4. Baqarah 2:30

The world is still exactly the same. And nothing is the same anymore

The seasons carry a certain air of sadness and nostalgia

The sweet abandon of a bittersweet childhood is long gone… the carefree self is long gone

Harsh realities are becoming more and more obvious with the changing atmospheres of the cosmos

With the seasonal clouds finally showing devastatingly beautiful colours hidden in their asymmetry

Distinguishing the black from the white without the murky grey hues in between is nearly impossible

So, every year at the beginning of the summer season, I make a promise to myself

A promise that this time- just this once- happiness will be possible

That every morning won’t be a ritual of nursing a heart that feels broken beyond repair

After having had so much to bear

Yet, here we are- in another season

On the same plane of existence, where the ones I have lost once roamed

Where my elders taught me that I had a life and skills to hone

But the world is a bizarre spectacle

So, I know it was always meant to be a debacle!

As the world rotates on an axis, with every “new world event” also occurring in a loop

Stories of one thousand, two thousand, three thousand years ago, being repeated over and over

The games never change but the players do

And by Allah

That’s a blessing if there ever was one

Because this dunya has a way of knocking one around to ensure that love for it doesn’t settle in the heart

And if this dunya isn’t permanent, it shouldn’t be home

If the purpose isn’t to roam the earth while being cognizant of its ability to turn on a dime,

The loss would, undoubtedly, be solely mine

Because you see, there’s a life to live- a life that you don’t get to set the rules for

And while this test is a temporary one

It’s easy to lose hope and drown in the increasing adversity that’s setting the tone

In those instances, you remember “Allah does not burden any soul with more than it can bear…

Do not lose heart, or despair…”

These verses are a life-line, the best there could be

And I know that Allah is always with me

That’s the way the world has always been exactly the same- and yet, nothing is the same anymore

I know what burning flesh smells like

do not be too disturbed—
it has only been within the sterile walls
of an operating room
Cauterized before hemorrhage occurs

I cannot help but think
of the tiny feet running from flames
children
who had no choice in this sensory experience

I know what the silence before an infant’s first cry sounds like
The bated breath if there is a delay
followed by relief moments later

I cannot help but think of the mothers
who are never able to hear the comfort
of their child’s first cry

I know the look of uncertainty
from a loved one 
witnessing their other half grow old into oblivion
forget parts of themselves with denial a weapon
piercing louder than the silence of what now?

I cannot help but think of the loved ones
who are denied the chance to witness
their love growing old alongside them
Captured away in this cruel little world

I know what a conversation brimming with fantasy sounds like
from a man who has grappled with his age
creating stories to become the main character
of the world inside his head
while he lives amongst the forgotten humans of society

I cannot help but think of the crutches of life
that the ancestors must have employed
living their life behind to inhabit a foreign land
escape a physical war to be met with a mental battle

I know what an infant fighting to breathe looks like
tiny lungs struggling with a tiny bobbing head
surrounded by little contraptions of oxygen
helping him fight an infection

I cannot help but think of the tiny infants forgotten
with no access to fancy little gadgets 
to help them survive this infected world

I know what the desperate fear of a man at war with his demons looks like
his “fighting for light” amongst the nightmares
that were once reality
enlisted to snipe, now paying the price

I cannot help but think of his demons
targets of war
just empty faces to the killer
once upon a time

I know how cancer invades a human so full of life
replacing every correct decision with wonder of
why me?
A mind destined to fight with a heart tired of b r e a k i n g

I know what a man who has fought death looks like
Heart brought back to life
Eyes filled with horror upon this revelation
As I tell my heart to shatter quietly

I know what the hollowing loss of a stranger feels like
one who had become familiar
throughout the days spent within these sterile walls
sharing smiles of hope and prayers of recovery

I know the colors of life and the colors of death–
the pale yellow of a diseased liver
the grueling green of a survival reflex
the fiery red of a screaming infant
the cold blue of a lifeless body
the black and brown bruises of a tired teenager

I know all these things, but I do not know what lies ahead
I do not know how many will touch my heart
I do not know how many I will cry for
I do not know how many more I will lose
strangers now, but bound to cross paths in this
lifelong journey

how is it possible to break your own heart
upon a path you’ve dreamed of for years?

Perhaps that is the price one pays for this knowledge
For this privilege of healing
And being healed all the same

I’ve made a journey of days
er, months
no, years in fact
in this body of mine.
And it has led me
on an odyssey
to the far-off bowels of my oceanic mind,
to the tenuous, outermost tips of branches of my rigid tree
that could snap at the pound of a stiff wind,
to the niches of ability and fragility within my fort.

My body has told me tales
of when it couldn’t take it—
the cold, the hunger, the pulls of stress,
of other osseous vulnerabilities,
has vouchsafed that
it’s not invincible as the tyrants have foolishly thought,
it can burn and it can sink,
it can founder and decay and rot.

Post this (years of) extensive travel
in my body and its yarns
I have come to a halt.
Wait, what are we so proud of then?
Of a speck-like existence?
I mean, how can we carry the cargo of conceit
on breakable shoulders?

Love, I say..
Can live many lives
And die many deaths

Love breathes..
Through long sentences & unspoken words
Stolen stares and meaningless emojis

Love heals..
With comfort foods and warm platters
In aromas that touch your soul

Love hums..
Through a song once shared together
Or a verse recited halfway

Love flows..
Through a quick call to check if you reached home
Or wrapped in a late good night text

Love hides..
Behind fixed tires and filled gas tanks
Between warm folds of laundry and piles of stocked groceries 

Love simmers..
With late night chai and left over desserts
After little ones are tucked in bed, resting dreams 

Love grows..
Inside you
From leaps of fleeting moments
To waves of passing years

Love blooms..
Watered by kindness and forgiveness
Sparkling and glistening on rainy days

Love shines..
Through the pretty and the ugly
In the cold and the cozy

Love holds..
Unfiltered, unedited
In the glow and the wrinkles

Love stands…
Tall, through the sleepless nights
In loud tantrums
And quiet tears

Love grounds..
In sickness that breaks us
In the pain that heals us
In the loss that completes us

Love brews..
Along rushed smiles out the door
And in slow hugs that say welcome home

Love moves..
In walks together reliving ordinary days
Or hours of aimless couch chats
Sketching plans and weaving dreams

Love wins..
In coffee surprises and planned destinations
Or last minute dates and canceled vacations

Love lives..
Through long, long days that sway
And short lived years that slip away
Where ever this love takes us today

May we find us
Right, next to each other 
Starlit and placid like the Ever After
Spellbound and smitten like the first days