Standing on the shores of life, I witness the rising and receding tides of faith and unpredictability. All the while gaining wisdom by reflecting upon the pearl-like shining memories of a strange and magnificent dawn that hailed the softly growing shadows of a miraculous twilight, I never knew I would come to love as the marvel of my existence.
The story of my blindness goes back some fourteen years in the past. I was eight years old. When my family had to shift to Skurdu in the course of my father’s job. We lived there for three months until the day of December 6, 2002, when I had an accident. It was the day of Eid-ul-fitr and like everyone else I was also waiting to enjoy it as much as possible. As a result of my excitement I couldn’t sleep properly that night. So naturally when my parents woke up they found me looking for my dress for Eid prayers but to my utter disappointment! My father said it’s too cold outside so I should stay at home. All the same I went to my room and dressed for the day.
Later when father had gone for eid prayers, I was sitting in the lounge, watching television when a knock at the door announced the arrival of my friends Ahmed and Amna. They invited me to a stroll in a nearby park. Which I happily accepted and went with them. When we reached the park, another friend joined us his name was Talha and as the whole colony consisted of only army officers and their families; our interest in playing soldiers was understandable. Hence, Talha brought with him an oval shaped object which looked a lot like a grenade.
At first our reaction to the sight of this thing was horror but when Talha suggested its use in one of our battles against other children. The horror vanished, replaced by excitement and curiosity but these were only my feelings. For when I expressed my enthusiasm on this discovery, Ahmed reminded me that it was an actual bomb. In return I assured him that no one would in their right mind drop an actual bomb in a park for children to play with. He wasn’t convinced and persisted in his argument. Ignoring him, I started tugging at the string attached to the top of the bomb; all three of my friends took some steps away from me and asked me if I had gone mad. I again replied quite calmly that it is not a bomb. Alas these were my last words in the world of sight because at that very moment a great blast was heard in the mountains of Skurdu and which still echoes in my ears.
At once excruciating pain beheld me, pain past endurance, pain such as I had never experienced before, and which drove everything else out of my mind so that all I could hear were my own agonized cries for my mother. I felt like someone had turned my whole world in to a great fire for every inch of my body was uncontrollably burning. I don’t know who came to rescue me, who took me to the ambulance, I only know that everyone kept repeating the same questions, what was it? Who gave it to you? Nevertheless, as I was in no condition to utter a single word except mama or baba, I suppose they fired their questions to some other Talha. Then I remembered my friends and as his voice fell to my ears, saying it was a bomb, all the horrors associated with bombs returned to me and his words rang inside my head like some supersonic wave, breaking my dreams of becoming an army officer, crushing my hopes of doing something great in this world and on top of everything I was certain of my death.
However, the ambulance kept going and I kept bleeding, and as the ambulance stopped at the gates of CMH Skurdu, I drifted away in to another world perhaps because I found myself a prisoner in a place with an unfathomable darkness and an unearthly silence, an ominous, thick with malice kind of silence. As though the death itself had woven it for its victims. I wanted to cry out for help but my voice, like everything else had forsaken me. I wanted to move and run away from that seemingly eternal vale of gloom but an unnatural chill had started devouring the warmth of my body, thus freezing me to death. I don’t know for how long I suffered that piercingly solitary stillness and that indescribable anguish. It might have lasted for hours, days or even months. The only thing I remember is a sudden rush of warmth in my body as though the very life was being poured inside me. after that I lost consciousness, but the deathly silence went on and on.
Curled up in a ball of pain and fear, my life was sinking deeper and deeper, beneath the dark and silent waters of death and despair. My sight along with its luxuries sank forever like a wrecked ship in the inky blackness of that noiseless agony. Nevertheless, when finally the silence shattered, I found myself waking up in a world I could barely recognize. Everything around me had suddenly vanished behind a thick veil of darkness. So that I could hear my parents reassuring voices that everything would be alright and the doctors working all around me; I could even hear my own terrified voice asking for my mother but no matter how hard I tried I could not see her or any of them. They seemed just inches away from me and yet were too far for me to see.
Slowly and gradually however like the setting sun the truth of my blindness settled over me and as such I wholeheartedly accepted it.
Even so in the early days of my blindness, I would feel my heart crushing beneath the heavy weight of my losses as one by one they flashed upon me like lightning. With each and every flash, the childish world of wonders and fantasies I adored so much was slowly crumbling away in to a whirlpool of bright and beautiful memories.
The majestic sight of the sun rising, bathing the world in its golden glory; the melancholy beauty of the autumn leaves falling down and drifting away in a sighing wind; and the harmonious melody of life and color that the spring sings for us were now mere whispers of a dead and delightful past. Thus an ever darkening road lied before me as the path of my life and as it appeared, everything else was stolen from me by the fatality of that unforgettable silence. Yet, what man perceives as the end of all things is often just another beginning. For the knowledge of the unseen resides with none but the All Knowing.
O you son of Adam, you are unlike any other creature that walks the Earth. Though forgotten by many of your kind, you still remain the deputy of your lord. He, Whose authority exceeds the boundaries of the Heavens and the Earth, “He Who has created death and life so that He may test you which of you is best in deeds, and He is the Mighty, the Forgiving” “Say He is Allah, the One, Allah, the Eternal, the Absolute, He does not beget nor is He begotten and there is nothing like Him” “Allah! none has the right to be worshipped but He, the Ever Living, the One Who sustains and protects all that exists. Neither slumber, nor sleep overtake Him. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on earth. Who is he that can intercede with Him except with His Permission? He knows what happens to them (His creatures) in this world, and what will happen to them in the Hereafter . And they will never encompass anything of His Knowledge except that which He wills. His Kursi extends over the heavens and the earth, and He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them. And He is the Most High, the Most Great.” Thus, whispered to me a voice, soft and gentle like the morning breeze, caressing like the loving touch of a mother to her infant, angelic in its sweetness and deep in its conviction. setting me free from the despairing curse of that unforgettable silence. It had left my heart a blaze in a fiery aura of a staunch faith in the wisdom of the most Wise and which still guides me in the ever darkening shadows of my blindness. For “No calamity befalls save by leave of Allah, and he who believes in Allah, He guides his heart, and Allah is The Knower of all things”