my road prince :)

Like a diary

 

...His presence in my life made me selfless. He made me want to sacrifice. He made me generous. He made me perpetually mindful of his state without ever feeling tired. He never made me feel impatient or angry. He made me notice my rigidity. No matter what he did or what happened, only a single thought emanated form my heart, “Was he happy?”

 

I did without everything I needed and wanted, missing none of it. He made me break all my deeply ingrained patterns without missing a beat. He made me laugh. He made me reflect. Yet I was the one overtly responsible for him.

 

He had this effect on me without asking me for any of it, without telling me to do any of it. He was a real Sufi. Not like the one everybody called me, making me wince, just because I stopped partying and didn't gossip. Who was younger than me, child-like and the epitome of sweetness.

 

As I wrote I knew I had made others feel like Shaan was making me feel. People other than him had made me feel the same. But then there was always a reason that connected me to something in them; blood, beauty, softness, sound. All of what attracted me to them, made me become attached to them, was bestowed by God, but I always forgot Him and became besotted with the one who was the manifestation of His Blessing.

 

Shaan only saw me and everything I did through Allah alone. I knew that when he walked into my place the first time after he had moved into his apartment and said, "Tareef uss Khuda ki jiss ne tujhe banaya." All praise to Allah who made you the way He made you. It was line from a song in some Indian movie.

 

I had laughed then and thought it was sweet. But it was something else entirely. He only saw me through Allah and so, for him, everything I did came only through His Lord. I was the means and He was the Source.

 

Everything I offered, he could have easily done without. He had no need for anything material. But most of all, Shaan made me begin to wonder about love, what it really was. How I had always experienced it with endless intensity yet it now seemed it was always superficial. Shaan was wiping everything out in terms of my understanding of the construct of that which the Sufis called "the first movement of the Universe." At 50, I guess I would be starting anew.

 

Whomever I loved before, when I thought about them, I thought about them. But with Shaan, when I think of him, I end up thinking of myself. He makes my nafs he focus, not his person. I think of my mistakes with forgiveness. I aspire to be like him. Whenever he gives me things I know I won't eat I take them, then ask his permission before I give them away. I have never done that in my life.

 

He is a Mo'min so he is a mirror. It's one thing to read something, then understand your self through it. It's entirely another for it to appear before you and you see it.

 

I was frustrated one day with my niece. I didn't know how to get her to do something I wanted so I asked his advice. He said exactly nothing. In his world there was no making someone do anything. Even one's own self. I guess that's where the sincerity bridge came in for me. When I forced myself to practice that which is beyond my capability and so its execution became false.

 

I would sometimes plead with people to make them see something that was right for me. Even right for them. It never worked. Shaan was alien to the concept. Yet he was from this world. He was born in it. He lived here. But there was no cunning, no sarcasm, no plotting or planning. Once or twice while talking to someone else trying to persuade them to do something, I winked at him. The second time I did it he said out loud, "I don't know what that means." I think, embarrassed, I just smiled.

 

I don't know if I will ever be able to figure out which I did to deserve him.

 

I thought maybe I should start making a list “What I learnt from Shaan today” which came from what I learnt about Shaan today. For instance we went to the park, just him and I. He wanted to play soccer. I wanted to pray at the shrine. I told him to play outside it so he wouldn’t wander off. I went in and then waiting for the Azaan came out again. Just then the call to prayer started.

 

I saw Shaan standing with the ball in his hand so I walked over.

 

“Why aren’t you playing?” I asked.

 

He pointed at the sky and just said, “Azaan.”

 

Later I asked him why he didn’t play because of it. “We only do one thing when the Azaan comes,” I said to him. We being the ones with money in Lahore. “No listening to music. That’s it! So do you do that out of adab, respect, not play?”

 

He just looked at me and said, “It’s the Azaan. And it was the Friday prayer,” he said with emphasis as if it made the answer obviously clear.

 

The next day we were hanging out in my lounge and I started asking him questions about a specific negative pattern. Why did it exist and what was the motivation or cause for it to occur. I guess I was being philosophical. Or pretending to be because I had specific people in mind that I clearly wanted to complain about without naming them. Not that he knew them. And I realized he showed me my lack of sincerity that existed even in a benign conversation.

 

Every time I created a scenario to describe the behaviour I was thinking about, he would give me an answer I didn’t understand at all. It was like if one said something to a child that was negative and they would say something back that made no sense because they literally had nothing to say about it. So I tried again and again he said something totally random. And I realized what was happening. Shaan never said anything negative about anyone or anything, even conceptually. Ever!

 

Even the landlady who kicked him out in 7 days, all he did was take her tea and coffee and all kinds of food. Every time he ate, he wanted to share his meal with her. No wonder by the end of it, she was sitting downstairs in his place every time I called him. I was like what the hell!

 

But she clearly sensed his energy. It was palpably purifying. He made me see what was wrong with me without saying a word about it or about me. I was the exact opposite all the time with every single person I knew. All I did was highlight their flaws, not in a mean way since my intent was to be provide a solution, but nevertheless I would be highlighting their flaws and giving them remedies based on what I was learning. It was insane!

 

I never even saw Shaan pray. I never asked him about it of course.

 

Then one evening I said, “In the Quran, Shaan, it says “establish prayer.” Not read it or perform it. “Aqeemu salat” – establish prayer. What does that mean to you?”

 

Shaan flicked his hair aside and just said matter of factly, “I think it means when you pray, pray with a pure, truthful heart. When it is clean and cleansed of everything.”

 

I just stared at him. He wasn’t even praying and he was in a state of establishing prayer. Which I had heard Uzair describe as being on the prayer mat the same as off of it; Physically clean and focused on Allah alone. The ablution was a requirement we could fulfill and hope it was correctly performed. But the singular focus on God, zero distraction, who had that in their salat?

 

My friend Zee asked him while we sat at her house, "Your manners are excellent Shaan. Who taught them to you?"

 

Shaan was sitting upright on his chair as if it were a stool. He never leaned back when he sat on something. It was the opposite of how I sat.

 

"Many nice people of very high ranks. I have met them in my life and their akhlaq, (morality and character), is beautiful."

 

I jumped into the conversation. "Where did you meet them? In the park?"

 

"I meet them in my dreams," he said looking at me.

 

Shaan was a lucid dreamer. Whenever I asked him how he slept, he often answered, "I had lovely dreams last night."

 

For someone who hardly ever remembers a dream, it was noticeable for me that how his night passed was a function of his dreams. While mine was always a function of my restlessness.

 

"So what do they say to you?" Zee asked.

 

"They say, 'You are a good kid. You must do good things.' And they always say, 'You must be better and better that what you are continuously.'"

 

I looked at him in silence. It was amazing to me how Allah Himself raised those who were special to Him. There was no formal training, no reading, no writing. Shaan didn't even have a physical Spiritual Master in his life. Everything that he knew was passed on to him from the Realm of the Unseen by those who were there.

 

I couldn't help but think of Nabi Kareem (peace be upon him). The verses where Allah calls him an Ummi which almost every translator understood literally as "the unlettered one." But I guess they were ordinary for that was the last thing he was. It was an yet another exclusivity that separated the blessed being of Nabi Pak (saw) from all of Mankind.

 

Maqam al Ummiyat – The Station of being an Ummi

 

Tafseer e Jilani :

 

“Amongst the 124,000 Prophets and 313 Messengers, the maqam, station, of being Ummi is specific to only the Last Messenger (saw). Never before has the word been used previously for any Prophet or Messenger.

 

The Meaning of Ummi; The word Ummi is derived from the word umm which means origin or source or root. So Nabi Kareem (saw) is Ummi because he is the origin of everything. For example, Mecca is called Umm ul Qura because it is the origin and first of the cities. The Quran is called Umm ul Kitab because it is the foundation and source of all the books.”

 

I heard a lecture of Sheikh Nurjan Mehramadi of the Naqshbandi silsila about why the Quran uses the word “Ummi” for Nabi Kareem (peace be upon him), the unlettered one, which only the Sufis have interpreted correctly;

 

Sheikh Nurjan: “The ears of Syaadna Muhammad (saw) submit to Allah alone and there is no human who can change the course of that reality. And that’s why Allah clarified this station of Sayyedna Muhammad (saw) when we say Ummi-hi, it is not that he in unlettered, He is the custodian of all uloom, knowledge, knowledge of awwaleen wa akhireen (beginning to the end), and his holy soul is the fountain of all realities.

 

But in a way in which Allah wanted to lay a claim that no human has taught this benevolent soul and and no human can come and say, ‘No, I taught him poetry when he was young, I taught him alphabet at this age,’ so that they would stake a claim to have composed the Quran. For Allah is the Best of Planners and He knows how bad humans are that they would try to claim, ‘No, no, these teachers taught and that’s how the Quran came.’

 

So Allah cleared the field and said, ‘There’s no teacher for this soul but someone who is Shadeed ul Quwa, Immensely Powerful, referring to Himself. He only listens to Allah.”

 

Shaan had no concept of money. He didn’t care about those things. He had no sense of money and what things cost. I brought him a wireless speaker like I got for myself rom the States and the next day he called me.

 

“Ma’am you have spent Rs. 50,000 on this speaker for me. It’s too much.”

 

I smiled. “It didn’t cost 50,000 Shaan (which was about 300 bucks). It cost me 5,000. Don’t worry about it.”

 

But it wasn’t like the speaker made him thrilled to receive it. Like at 50 I might be if someone gave me something I really liked. That was the reaction I always searched for, waited for with Shaan. The excitement. But it never came. He wanted nothing from the world. He had no attachment to it.

 

When he moved to my place I told him we should buy him some winter clothes.

 

"The weather is changing. So I think we should buy material f or a few shalwar kamizes and I can find a men's tailor to get them stitched for you."

 

"I want two," he declared. "A purple and you pick the other colour."

 

"I don't know," I said. "Two might not be enough,"

 

"No," he said with certainty. "One to wear and one to wash."

 

When I translated a verse from the Quran about the illusive nature of the world we were warned of throughout it, I thought of Shaan again.

 

إِنَّا جَعَلْنَا مَا عَلَى ٱلْأَرْضِ زِينَةً لَّهَا لِنَبْلُوَهُمْ أَيُّهُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًا

 

(Truly we have made all that is on Earth as an adornment for it) that We may try them, as to which of them is best in their deed.

 

Surah Al-Kahf, Verse 7

 

Tafseer e Jilani:

Inna ja’alne ma ala alardi: Without doubt We created upon this Earth three basic things; animals and humans, vegetation, and buried treasures. And we created whatever else comes from this Earth; different tastes and different lusts, which are physical or fantasy.

 

Zeenatal laha: These are adornments for it that make it (the world) beautiful and attractive…

 

Ayyuhum ahsan amlan: to see which of them (Mankind) has the best deeds and these deeds are the ones which are completed with true guidance and reflection by detachment from the world. And the absence of focus towards it and staying away from its enjoyment which is an illusion. And staying away from the distraction it creates and its lusts which bring with them all kinds of pain and difficulties and desires. It is these wishes which in turn cause different sins and crimes.

 

It is then imperative that in this world then one lives in a single room and wears a single outfit and eats simply, for everything else is just debris which is transient, which inherits sinfulness and trials.

 

The other day Shaan and I went to the park. As I sat with him on the back seat, he started reciting poetry. Which he loves to do. Always extemporaneous. I don't understand it usually but once in a while, he catches my attention. On this day, the last line he spoke in Urdu was;

 

"In your hand is the tasbeeh (rosary), in your hand is the Quran,

Become the namaz!

 

I was getting dropped off at the shrine. He was going to play with a ball with Usman. The same day later, we were coming home from somewhere. I had been getting up for Tahajjud (the prayer before Fajr) but my nafs and Iblis were both goading me to give it a miss.

 

"Let's sleep," was my nafs' mantra.

 

Iblis was more tactical. "How about doing it a day and taking a day off?"

 

Trust him to say what was going to hit a nerve with me. I had read that fasting every day was not suggested. Doing it on alternate days though was recommended. So that the act, one of the highest in terms of exercising restraint and acquiring mindfulness, taqwa, did not become a routine that was fruitless.

 

As we came close to my house, I asked Shaan, ashamed by my question, "Shaan, I was thinking. I feel a little tired so maybe I don't pray Tahajjud every single day. What do you think?"

 

This is after I had done the tafseer of the verse with Qari Sahib;

 

‏وَمِنَ ٱلَّيْلِ فَتَهَجَّدْ بِهِۦ نَافِلَةًۭ لَّكَ

 

And rise from your sleep and pray during the part of the night and extra voluntary prayer,

 

it may be well that your Lord will raise you (to) a station praiseworthy.

 

Surah Al Isra’, Verse 79

 

Wa: And if you want even more closeness (to Allah) and blessings, then awaken your heart and body, in the last part…

 

Min al layli: of the night and leave sleep out of desiring the Pleasure of Allah…

 

Fatahajjad bi hi: and pray the Prayer of Tahajjud, prolonging your recitation in it so it becomes…

 

Nafilatan: extra…

 

Laka: than the dutied prayers for you. It will increase your Closeness and your honour (before your Lord).

 

No wonder I felt ashamed.

 

Shaan said something but he mumbled it so I leaned in.

 

"I'm sorry?"

 

And he softly said, "Who can tell someone to not pray Tahajjud."

 

I leaned back. I thought he was going to say something that was in agreement with my want. That it was ok to skip it or take a break once in a while. But he didn't. He just said;

 

"Who can tell someone to not pray Tahajjud."

 

I set my alarm.

 

A month in I realize Shaan is an Aspie. He's in the spectrum. My friend who works with kids like that told me. I have a close friend whose first born also has Asperger's. It was true. I couldn't get him to do anything.

 

He still took a shower from the sink. He left the fridge door open. The tap running. The light in his bathroom always on. I called her and she told me I had to put up signs. That my verbal instructions were like Charlie Brown heard an adult - waan waan waan waaan waaan!

 

I thought about what that meant for me, his being like that and it clicked. I had to learn to accept, through him, what people cannot change about themselves. I had to learn to do it without anger, without impatience, without judgement. I had to learn to do it kindly.

 

I knew so many people who were unchanging and planning on staying that way. My reaction to them was always the same; hard. I was so easily angered, so easily offended.

 

وَإِمَّا يَنزَغَنَّكَ مِنَ ٱلشَّيْطَـٰنِ نَزْغٌ فَٱسْتَعِذْ بِٱللَّهِ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ

 

If an evil suggestion come to you from Satan stirring you (to blind anger),

then seek refuge with Allah. Surely He is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.

Surah Al-A’raf, Verse 200

 

Tafseer e Jilani:

 

Wa Imma Yanazaghannaka: So if reaches you whispers which then disappear, thus placing you in a state of disruption…

 

Min Shaitaan: it is from Shaitaan, who influences you physically through the organs which cause anger and stokes the ego in a way that is only ignorant creating a false sense of dignity…

 

Nazghun: causing doubts and delusions that persuade you to become angry and take you out of the state that you have been ordered to stay in, which is tolerance and softness of behaviour.

 

Fasta’iz billah: So come into the Refuge of Allah from these entrapments and return to Him from these doubts and this plotting. He is with His Glory Enough to protect you from his evil and treachery.

 

Inna hu: Indeed, Allah is Pure from everything that is negative…

 

Sami’un: and is the Acceptor of your prayers,

 

Aleem: and the Fulfiller of your needs.

 

And all I could do was remember one line; "...creating a false sense of dignity..."

 

I wondered how that was going to go.

 

It was his birthday yesterday. He turned 47. I still can't over it. He looks like he's 22. Using no fancy moisturizers during the day and cleansing creams at night like the rest of us only a few years older than him. I kept telling him to at least use some lotion on his face as it got colder in Lahore but of course he ignored me.

 

He wore his new black shalwar kamiz and looked beautiful. His smile is always radiant. Nazli was the only one I asked. She was always kind to him. The others were too busy or didn't care. And now I didn't care.

 

I thought about it after the party was over and I was in my room alone. Was that it with people? Having a person in the house that one cared for, took responsibility for, worrying about their emotional state, was that what made them indifferent to others?

 

Ever since Shaan was in my house, I didn't care at all about who I met and who I didn't. I didn't miss anyone. I didn't seek anyone. I played with my coach five days a week at the park. Shaan came with us walking around while I played. Before we started, I played Catch with him.

 

It was a tennis ball and we threw it at each other only a few feet apart. Shaan brought the ball in a bag he had sewn himself. He washed it before he put it inside and washed it after we played so it was always clean.

 

I cried as I thought, would I be like the others whose indifference made me sad so many times throughout my life, leaving me perplexed as to why it happened.

 

Would I?

 

The thing I started to notice with eagle eyes was the behaviour of every single person in my life towards Shaan. Whether it was kind or not, that was all I cared about. Only two people were; Nazli and Shuggy Aunty. Everyone else acted like a nut. Obviously it didn't have anything to do with him. It was just an unveiling of their state before my eyes.

 

Shaan didn't care at all what anyone said to him. At all! He was unaffected by everyone's behaviour around him. No matter how personal they got. Or aggressive! He was like the desert upon which fell rain and left it unchanged like it had never been there.

 

Actually it felt more like the fire that turned to flowers only for Hazrat Ibrahim. Those words people hurdled at him were no less than fire but for him they might as well have been flowers. Once again that which I had only known intellectually came alive for me. People are harsh or rude only when something is wrong with them. But despite knowing that, all my life I took it personally.

 

When I asked him about them ever, mentioning gently their madness, he dismissed it quite casually. "It's ok Ma'am. I don't mind what anyone says to me. Plus beautiful people have a tendency to be proud," he said matter of factly.

 

I smiled.

 

His manner of forgiving made me focus on mine. I realized that when I don't say sorry to someone its because I think of them as lesser than myself. Otherwise I have no problem uttering the word "sorry." I excuses I made to justify not asking for forgiveness after acting like a jerk; it was all masking that I thought of them as lesser than me.

 

On Christmas I had thought Shaan could give some money to the staff in the house who were Christian. I had money of his that someone had sent me. I had forgotten about it on the morning of the 24th when I went downstairs and saw he was busy with something.

 

His back was turned me to and I saw scissors so thought he was doing his usual thing; accenting his clothes with pockets and zips. When I came back from the kitchen and entered his room, I saw him coming towards me with two paper bags.

 

"What is that?" I asked curious.

 

"These are presents for Aunty Bholi and Safdar."

 

I looked in. I saw two boxes. Then he leaned in and whispered, "It's only sweets."

 

I looked at him in amazement. "You made these? The bags and the boxes?"

 

He beamed. "I made them."

 

I lunged out and hugged him.

 

"Wow Shaan! They are so beautiful. "

 

He had even put string in the bags so one could hold them upright.

 

When I went upstairs my heart felt elation. There was something about working with your hands, making things with them. That is what all the Prophets did always. Work with their hands. I was downloading music at the time. With my headphones on, a house track blaring, I looked at mine and wished they could make something for someone else as well.

 

It was a hell of a start to a Friday.

 

...

 

(work in progress)

Done