No, I'm Real

The speaker eloquently layed out his menifesto.

"... I will use the money wisely. Last time around I didn't know we have so much money and we can actually use this money to do these things."

I sat there, wondering how should I compute these words and how should I feel. I scrutinized his face, waiting if he would make an eye contact with me, but I guess the audience engulfed him.

"Remember I used to hold events last time around? I didn't know about this. So now that I know, I can ensure you we will spend them wisely."

I just wished I was Howard Roark - completely emotionless and completely unaffected by other people. I felt like shouting, "I've told you, I've asked you, I was even there and you said it's a hassle and you didn't need it." I closed my eyes and told myself, "Let go, ego, shut up."

"The budgets were all approximate..."

I just sat my eyes on the face, waiting for any sign of guilt to show, but it never came. In my head, "That's not true, but we know..." Ahh, I just kept quiet, as I usually do. And I wonder, "Is this pretension?" The other voice in my head shouted "No, I'm real."

PS: This is just a self made-up drama. Nobody should ever link it with anything real. I like drama when I'm in my 'fiction mode'. Random imaginary thought.

Get It?

I'm not free off late, and it's bothering me. I'll try to pretend that I don't care, but I can only pretend - at best - as it is. Sometimes I say to myself it's not about me, but I guess that is a big lie.

"Of course it's about you, what you desire, and your ego. Don't pretend to be some martyr over here. Get it?!?!"

Well, I'm not playing any game; I'm not hiding any ace up my sleeves; I'm just trying to be true... trying to be true to Him. And those who are dear to God, they put their trust in Him, and He will take care of their affairs. But, you know what's scary? I'm just a sinner. Sometimes I wonder, maybe, after all, I walk alone deservingly.

He knows best and I've just got to trust.

PS: The pen has been lifted and the ink has been dried . Cheer up =)

On Fiction

Someone asked me, “What kind of book do you read?” The answer can be from Mars to Venus to Scientific American or Bulugh al-Maram. Maybe someday I’ll write on that, but this is just on fiction, and it’s not in details.

I picked a spot at the veranda of the restaurant as I wanted to breathe the stale, homely air. I reclined myself on the chair and I put The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society on the table. The waiter looked quizzically at me, as though he was expecting something out of the ordinary to happen – perhaps me conjuring some magic?

“Sorang je?”

In my mind, I was like “patut la...” and I smiled politely at him. I thought about replying the sarcastic “Oh I’m here with my book”, but I decided to be a bit nice.

“Ha’ah sorang je.”

I guess the sight of a young lad arriving at midnight with just a novel and no one else to lepak with, was not something mundane for him. I looked around to do a ‘survey.’ True enough I was the only person sitting at this coffee shop alone with a book. Around me were families, groups of friends, and the lovebirds – hopefully they were married. For the record, I’d prefer to be with friends, but during that time none of them were available.

“Ipoh White Coffee cold satu.”

“Ada apa-apa lagi?”

“Tu je, terime kasih”

I don’t like hot drinks; that is part of my eccentricity. I immersed myself with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society for a couple of hours and decided to call it a day.

I think fictions are like chocolates: I like to let them melt in my mouth slowly. But I always marvel at people who can speed read – simply because I can’t do it. Plus, speed readers are useful people to be around with. When a highly-anticipated book comes out (i.e. Harry Potter), everybody wants to read it first and nobody likes to wait. Since I like to taste a book like a chocolate, it means I always have to go through the agonizing wait. Hint: We don’t buy so many Harry Potter books at the same time.

So my sister and my cousins will lock themselves up in their rooms when they get their copies of Harry Potter, and they will emerge out of their respective fortresses before dinner with “dah habis baca dah” pronounced on their lips – I have to simply wait for the fastest reader to get my hand on the book. The only thing I will say is “shut up, don’t give me the spoilers” and I’ll take two or three days to finish the same book.

The genre of fiction that I like changes from time to time. When I was small, I like sci fi, fantasy, and detective stories in particular. I read the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy plus The Hobbit way before LOTR became popular on the big screen. I was also a Conan Doyle buff: I read every story that he wrote on Sherlock Holmes, including The Hound of Baskervilles and His Last Bow.

But as I grew older, my penchant for fantasies and thrilling plot wanes, and I started to read novels with more emotion and bigger themes. Plus, during college, my literature teacher was an advocate of satirical classics. So I started to read the works of Orwell, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Harper Lee, Gabriel García Márquez, Fitzgerald, and the likes. I also started to read classic chick lit as I tried to figure out The Other – I still don’t understand them and I don’t think I ever will. Ops... Hehe...

Currently I’m on holiday, and I’m reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Fountainhead. The Fountainhead is fast becoming one of my favourites, I think I’ll write something about it in the future when I’m done with the novel.

The Edge

Slow it down, because I can't...
Reason me out as my mind goes off,
Make it simpler for me please,
Maafkan bila ku tak sempurna.

The Dilemma

“Who am I?”
You just feel sad,
You also wonder…
“Who do I want to be?”
You keep on wondering…
“Does God love me?”
Then you realize,
“Do I love God?”
You keep on wondering forever,
Your pillow is wet with your tears,

What about the world?
“No, they don’t understand”
You comfort yourself,
“God certainly understands me”
You realize again,
“But I’m a sinner”
The tears keep flowing on…

Self-pitying is worthless,
“I’ve got to do something”
Then another realization,
“But this is not the first time”
You can’t even remember when,
“I’m just hopeless…”

The candle flickers,
A stray cat purrs outside,
You’re swimming in your tears,
And you’re tired…
Tomorrow is another day,
“Have faith... Have faith…”
Bismillahi ahya wa amut.

How Can I Tell You?

I saw some pictures of some friends, some close ones, and I get scared. I wonder, how can I tell you? Just how can I tell you? If we are at overseas and we are being sponsored, know that this is a weighty trust; a trust that must not be betrayed by our whims. We are not here merely to assimilate the decadent culture of our surrounding. Please have some proud of the greatest gift of humankind that is being bestowed to us: The knowledge of the self that can liberate us from the superficiality of this world. What is liberation? Does it come from those stimuli that excite the senses? Or is it the popular culture that we clothe ourselves with, so that we feel just like them? Know that liberation comes only when you submit… yourself only to Him.

"Verily the friends of Allah are those on whom fear cometh not, nor do they grieve" (10:62)

It seems almost unattainable. It is the closest you can get to perfection. So think deep my friend, is this it at all? As T.S. Elliot eloquently laments in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

Let’s switch to myself. Alhamdulillah, I am very, very happy at the moment. Life just seems to finally pull together just like I want it to be – after some period of learning it the hard way. Hopefully things are going to be fine, insyaAllah. I think I sort of figured out how not to be emo. Hehe..

I recently had a conversation with a friend – a nice friend. This nice friend of mine said a da’i has to be thiqah (a loose translation would be scrupulous I guess), as only when people respect a da’i will he/she be effective. But I said: I don’t really care... This friend of mine said, you have to care if you care enough for people. So true…

I better get going, as I have one more paper to go… and the heart will be going to where it belongs soon!

Anecdotes on Abu Hanifah

Note: This is transcription of Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah's audio lecture: The Principal Imams and Their Schools. I listen to the lecture as I have to do an essay on the formation of school of laws (madhab) for my Islamic History course. I am bored, so this is an aside for me. I find this part funny and interesting, so I would like to share it here. Since it is an audio lecture, there are no citations or authenticity reports for the stories.

Abu Hanifah was a very humorous man. He was a person who people love to be around him. It is very hard to hate Abu Hanifah. He was extremely affable. He knew how to approach people. An example: He heard of a shi’i in Kuffah who was saying bad things about Uthman r.a. What did he do? What would you do? Go beat him up, right? Go and get him…

Abu Hanifah went to the man’s house and the conversation went something like this:

“There is someone here who would like to marry your daughter.”
“O really, really?”
“Yeah, he is very wealthy.”
“That’s ok, I don’t mind”
“Also he has this quality and that quality”
(Abu Hanifah was describing all the good qualities of Uthman r.a.)
The main said, “Goodness, bring this man, this will be such an honour”
Abu Hanifah said,“This is Uthman ibn Affan”
The man was like, “Oh.. Ok I get my lesson.”

Another story:-
Abu Hanifah had a neighbor who got drunk every night and he will start singing. He always sang nobody loves me, everybody hates me (you know that kind of thing). Then one night Abu Hanifah didn’t hear him singing, so he asked someone around, “where is he?” “He is in jail, they picked him up, he was drunk and he was singing.” Abu Hanifah got on his mule and he rode to the jail

He told the jail man, “you know that young man, that is my neighbor. I am Abu Hanifah.” “Oh, you are Abu Hanifah?” “Yeah, don’t you think you can let him out?”

So he got the young man out of the prison and sat him on the back of his mule. He started riding and he said, “how come you’re not singing? You’re always singing.” The young man just fell in love with Abu Hanifah and he became like a disciple of Abu Hanifah.

There were so many stories like that, but that was Abu Hanifah. He was a very beautiful person.