IN HIS DISMAL

The dark alley that hides the monsters,

Now accompanies a man as he sits in dismay

All his hope vanishing in the gloom,

He stares at the sky but little does he see,

That everything is by his side,

Fear grips his heart, oblivion, as he sees

The shadow lies beside him,

Beaming at the moon,

How stupid is the human? Ponders the nature

With all that's around him yet he thinks he's alone

The earth that holds him,

the sky that shelters

the stars that guide,

 the moon that illuminates,

Yet his heart wails aloud as hears the nature,

Dribble down the drops as the thunder breaks the sky

And cries the nature for the human that tries

But fails to see what marvels await him,

A step, all he needs.

But the human never moves,

As the destiny awaits him,

The signs are there yet he's unable to see

Oh human, leave desires, set yourself free

Sometimes it's dark that gives you the answer,

A little pain it takes to reach the glory.

So try again human, and trying's all will it take

The future is yours and only yours to make!

50 SHADES OF OUR SOCIETY

"HONOR"

“Why did you kill her?”

“For the sake of honor”, came the reply.

“And you think it was justified?”

“She brought disgrace to our family.”

“And a murder doesn't bring disgrace?”

“Not when it is done to save the honor.”

“And you think the honor is restored.”

“No, but no one will say we raised a characterless woman.”

“And they wouldn’t care about raising a murderer?”

“I saved the honor.” The persistent voice replied.

“But you already said it couldn’t be restored.”

“Sometimes we need to make amendments, something we don’t have a choice.”

“So you think there was no other choice than to kill her?”

“Precisely.”

“So you think humility she brought was worse than taking a life.”

-Silence.

“And if it were your son instead, if he had done the very same thing, would you have killed him too? For the sake of honor?”

"No."

"Why not?"

“Because the society never questions the honor if it’s a boy.” The answer was heard.

50 SHADES OF OUR SOCIETY

"BECAUSE SOMEONE SAID SO"

Like usual she greeted her father as he came home, but that day he didn’t reply. It was nothing unusual; he had done that many times before. Worried about what she could possibly have done, she returned to her room and busied herself. For quite some time she could hear him talking to her mother harshly but it was hard to grasp what the matter was.

After an hour when he had had his dinner, he called for her. With unease in her heart, she went to his room and followed his order to sit. Glancing at her mother, she tried to figure out what this was all about but her mother’s cold expression did no help, instead, it added to her discomfort.

“When I sent you in co-education, did I not tell you that my dignity is in your hands?” he shouted.

Scared of her father’s wrath and surprised of what was going to follow it, she clutched the sofa beneath her hands, as tightly as she could.

“You ruined my honor today, I can’t face anyone in the society now, I am ashamed I raised such a characterless girl”

A wave of anger passed through her and in a moment she felt tears rolling down her cheek.

“What have I done?” She couldn’t keep her voice down.

“Don’t raise your voice” her mother shouted.

“Look at her, now this is the way she talks to her father” she heard him yelling.

“What you have done hasn’t left us to face anyone, you filthy disgrace to this family”, the yelling continued.

“Can you imagine what I went through when I had to hear it from someone that this filth had been fooling around with guys?”

“That is an accusation” she tried to argue.

“You think I am lying? You think my friend is lying, that man is such an honorable person.”

She was shocked to see her father trusting an outside source than her.

“Who was the guy at the bus stop?” her mother inquired.

And it all became clear; she recalled waiting for the bus while a class fellow walked over to her discussing some stuff related to class. So that was what disgraced her family. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

She remembered the mockery she faced as she tried to avoid her class fellows, how she was called rude and her behavior inappropriate.

Out of the door, her brother stood listening.

Tired and shocked, she left the room but from then on she did not try to avoid anyone. What good had it done to her? She befriended boys as well but did her best to stay out of her family’s sight.

One morning, they found her dead in her bed. Her brother was gone. But a note lied beside. “FOR THE SAKE OF OUR FAMILY’S HONOR”.

HOW DID WE END UP HERE?

So as we see, Ramadan is almost over. Have you earned your place in Jannah yet? Have you earned redemption from your sins yet? Have you purified your soul yet?

Well, it should have been easier to accomplish as the "Shaytaan" is locked up. But it wasn't easy at all. You still had bad thoughts, you still slept through some prayers, you still got distracted while praying, you still lost your temper. People still did evil. People still kept killing, they still kept stealing. Why?

The devil wasn't there to drive you, to lead you astray. It was all you. Every time you sinned, it was all under your control. It was all you. You can't blame the devil this time, can you now?

Have you realized how lost you are? Because all this time it had been only you. What does the devil need to do nowadays? I wonder. I wonder and wonder. And my answer is "absolutely nothing". At least it doesn't need to work on us at all. Look at us. We are so lost. We are ruining ourselves. We don't need someone to pump us into doing evil. We are so enslaved by out heart that we follow everything it wants. We know the things we are doing are wrong but we keep going anyway. We know that death is unpredictable and we may die before our next breath. We know we are going to be held accountable for our deeds. So where is our fear?

You know what I think the devil does nowadays? He sits with popcorns in his lap and watches how we nail the job he was supposed to do. Have you wondered where have we reached?

We are lost, in darkness. Doomed in nothingness. We have fallen into an abyss wondering how we ended up here.
How do I know all this? Because I am one of them. I am lost too. I have seen people who have a bit left in them but the rest of us, we are just lost.
You know, no one but you can change that. But I feel, we lack motivation. Once in a while if you sit in an Islamic lecture, you feel your soul connecting again. You feel it coming back to life again. But we don't try. We are just waiting for something. But that something will never come. You have to take a step before it's too late. We all have to.

A VIEW FROM THE CEMETERY

And there stood I, beside my grave

Watched all them lying, with all but crave
Not always was it a sight to see
While bodies lied there, the souls hung free
And as they entombed, what looked like a boy
His gleaming soul came jumping with joy
And far beyond what we heard was a scream
One struggling to break through like through a bad dream,
And all at once, we stood in vain
Watching the soul suffering in pain
Not unusual it was when we heard him say
He would do better if given one more day,
There was no good but the bitter truth aghast
What all had remained now was him with his past
And behind these walls, were they all lost in the glory
Little did they know, reaching its end is their story!
                               -Zirva Shabbir

BETRAYED BY THE ODDS

All my life, I have always had trouble convincing people and I have always ended up as a liar, not to mention I am a terrible liar. First, I have been through the exasperating interrogations that, seriously I am neither mad nor depressed. But then I don’t blame them, it’s not really helpful to say that you are totally alright when your RB face clearly negates your statement, leaving you looking like planning to land a punch on someone’s face. True, I have landed countless punches on people’s faces in my head but as long as I am not leaving black eyes or bleeding noses behind, I am pretty much covering my tracks.

Second, my sarcasm has brought its own troubles. People don’t usually get it, some get offended. Sarcasm is an easy shot to get away with things you wanna say, especially to the ones who don’t get it. But well, there comes a price. Like when you actually compliment someone, and they “really” know you, they won’t be convinced. And if somehow, miraculously, they are convinced that you sincerely meant it, they would go like “whoa there, how did that happen?” And you eventually don’t feel like complimenting them anymore.

Third, when I have to pretend something, that’s a fail that leaves an impression, and not a very nice one. I know how to smile but let’s just say it’s not my best asset. So if once in a while I might try to betray my mind, my expressions betray me back. You can say it ends up as a lose lose situation every time. In case I have to force a smile, it comes out as so forced, or maybe it doesn’t come out at all, anyway, once again, the person is not convinced that I am actually a nice person who is as betrayed by the rude expressions as much as you were hurt by them. Okay, I might have stretched the truth, a little, at the nice part.

But besides these troubles, there is another struggle I have been through, for a while now; trying to convince people that I don’t study. Now, I might sound like a typical drama queen, and my results might support the statement. Although my graph has been going down and the university had a nice, fun time, messing me up, but my convincing skills improved or so I’d thought. Because this time I had them almost convinced that I am going to flunk and there is no otherwise. And that was no lie. But… I’ll leave it up to you to guess the rest.

Well, I have seen the drama queens who keep ranting about not studying a word. And there is a fine line that differentiates me from people like them. Like, I don’t have a hanging face when I say I am gonna  fail, I laugh when I screw up because I screw up real bad.  And if I do fail, or get bad marks you can see “I don’t give a damn” clearly printed on my face. True, I once made it to the nerdy list, though I was the last in it but who cares? I am probably kicked out from that now.

 But I guess, you can’t always get what you want. People will buy what they see and they certainly don’t see the truth and the odds never come out in my favor and I appreciate that because passing a test you thought you failed, well that is a blessing.

THINK LOGICALLY.

History is repeating itself. They say it’s the worst incident since 9/11. Once again, the name of the entire Muslim community is being dragged through the mud. What they fail to see, is that we have been through much worse. They think those people were killed because of being “gay”. Our more than 160 children were killed, what for? Being students? There is no Anti-American agenda here, there is only anti-Muslim agenda. If any of this were true, if Islam were the religion of violence, if the whole race were the terrorist, use your common sense you wouldn’t even be here today. Your ancestors would have been all dead, there would have been nobody left alive. Islam has been prevailing for 14 centuries, this hasn’t been happening for 14 centuries. This all started in the past two decades or so. Don’t be blinded by everything you see, don’t fall for everything you hear. Islam has nothing to do with any act of violence.

#Orlando