Life in the Desert

-
Saudi Village Yamama Painting - Saudi Village Yamama Fine Art Print - Yvonne Ayoub

With a wide, vague , almost sensual turn of his arm he describes a circle in the air - a circle which encompasses everything that belongs to this life: the poor, dusky room, the wind and its eternal roar, the relentless advance of the sands; longing for happiness, and resignation to what cannot be changed; the platter full of dates; the struggling orchards behind their shield of tamarisks; the fire on the hearth; a young woman's laughter somewhere in the courtyard beyond: and in all these things and in the gesture that has brought them out and together I seem to hear the song of a strong spirit which knows no barriers of circumstance and is at peace with itself.

Excerpt from The Road to Mecca by Muhammad Asad

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Waiting For Afternoon Chai

-
I'm sitting in my verandah right across from that big, beautiful neem tree, anticipating my favourite time of day in this city. Karachi is lovely in the afternoons.  When I'm in my balcony in an ugly plastic chair, or upstairs on the roof where the view is blocked by rows of apartment buildings, leaking sewage and other by-products of domestic life, and especially, yes, ESPECIALLY when we're driving towards Malir (preferably Cantt) or just heading towards the airport, and the sun hits everything in exactly the right place making the buildings look like they’re going up in rosy flames, I feel like I'm on top of the world. Literally. The world can't possibly be more beautiful than this. And all the ugly hatred, all the bitterness of this century is forgotten. I only see glorious, ancient Karachi. And I feel tremendously nostalgic. I guess, 20 years of this life are enough to look back on and I'm nostalgic for each one of them. For all the places I've ever b...
Read more

Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg!

-
I facebook too much. Signing in every hour, hoping for a shiny, red '1 new notification' (or inbox message if I'm lucky)-arghh, I'm going to HAVE to sign in right now!!-is facebooking too much. Feeling like an idiot when you haven't got any new notifications or inbox messages or friend requests or event invitations (application requests don't count in my book), and then logging out in disappointment, vowing to never visit the darned website again (WTH, it's been four whole hours and she STILL hasn't replied to my wallpost but she's had time to like all his pictures) is facebooking too much. Thinking about your next status update while you're supposed to be cramming for your C-language test is definitely facebooking too much. I hate it. But I can't stop. Sometimes I wonder if this is what being a smoking addict would be like. Going to bed promising to never ever EVER do it again, and in the morning you're still strong, but as the hours...
Read more

Keeping Faith

-
So, they tell me there are worse things in life. And somewhere deep inside, I know they're right. Hell, in this century, with countries vying with each other over nuclear warfare, and suicide bombers blowing craters a meter wide in residential streets, merely existing is an achievement. People get divorced, get cheated on, lose their kids to gang violence, have their houses robbed (sometimes five times over), get jailed for crimes they didn't commit. How many families have lost loved ones in airplane crashes? Yes, there's always somebody out there who has it worse than you. But does that mean that if a person doesn't fall in one of the above-mentioned categories, his or her problems aren't important enough? Their suffering doesn't matter because they haven't been hurt enough, is that it? I don't think so. Every time someone hurts, no matter how small, it matters. We're all human, and we're all equal, and when one of us hurts, it is a t...
Read more