No Help at All

My Beloved is no help at all.

I ask for a needle, He hands me a chicken.
I ask for a hammer, He gives me a bucket.
I ask him for cloth, He gives me grapes.

Crazy.
This is no way
to run a partnership!

I ask Him for answers, and he gives me a handful of date pits.
I ask Him for comfort, and He shows me a bruise on His elbow.
I ask Him for a display of righteous wrath, and what does He do?
He ignores my enemies and smothers me with kisses.

I would talk to Him
but talking does no good.
He will insist that I sing or dance my complaint
and that will drain it of every last drop of irritation.
Pointless and silly.

Najat knows how to answer this: Ask for nothing
and build a life from the random gifts
that Allah is always sending.

Fire

Here is a fire that threatens to consume all:
my house, my wife, my children,
my possessions, my goats, my wealth.

Even now the flames lick at my face
and I can see it coming—
the utter destruction of all that I love:

my neighbors, my village, the mosque,
and even more dear,
my body, my life, my identity.

All that I am, all that I have, nothing more than
ashes caught in dust devils
wobbling across wastes of sand.

And you, my Love, you stand by
not with water to douse this conflagration
but with a fan to urge sparks into disaster.

Najat knows you don’t mean any harm
—but utter and complete destruction of all that I know and love?
Oh, yes. That you most certainly intend.

Now

Now
the sky is radiating rose and ochre,
night is even now spreading her gown.

I have the shortness of this hour
to say what must be said,
to reveal what is hidden within me

before darkness shrouds this fleeting life forever.
And I—no surprise—feel frozen in my fear.
No words are coming, no thoughts, no epiphanies.

Night is coming. Allah is waiting.
Have mercy, Beloved,
may you deem the desert of my distress a fitting gift.

For I have
nothing else of value to offer
now.

Submitting All Things

Last night I asked my wife
if she had submitted in all things
to the will of Allah

whereupon she loudly announced
that submission to me was quite arduous enough
and that no reasonable deity could possibly require more.

I was shaken by this pronouncement
and it caused me to reflect upon
how much wiser than myself my wife often is.

Starting tomorrow I shall begin a new spiritual discipline:
I shall submit in all things, spiritual and temporal,
to my wife

and I trust that Allah
will marvel
at my new scrupulosity.

Just So You Know

Just so you know
Allah will keep picking at you
until you either
bleed righteousness
or you tell Him to stop it.

This Silence is Pregnant

This silence is pregnant
with Vision
gathering itself
to pounce upon your brain
if you will just shut up
and sit still
long enough
to let it land on you.

The Desert

In this desert, I see no life.
No creature scurries,
no sign of green creeps across this landscape.

Yet my Beloved has lured me out here and abandoned me.
And it’s not the first time, either.
Remind me, why should I not be upset about this?

My mind waxes philosophical
and insists that there are things to be learned in the desert.
But knowledge is the last thing I am thirsty for, here.

You know what I really want?
Distraction. Because the sameness of the sand and scrub
depress me and distress my spirit.

I want to be anywhere but here.
I want to feel my Beloved again.
I want, I want, I want, I want.

Oh. Okay. I guess there are things
to be learned in the desert.
I am breathing. It is enough.

Najat can really be an idiot.

Sit, Najat. Stare at the sand.
And let the emptiness suck the last drop of
triviality and self-obsessed foolishness from your soul.

Ambition

Have I done enough?
This question whips at my soul like the Sirocco
and leaves me restless and dissatisfied with my lot.

What is this restless ambition that plagues my soul?
Have I not done all that I have done for the Beloved?
And have I not been blessed with true friends and soulful labor?

Would I trade a humble and true treasure
for an empty dream of fame and wealth?
Am I a such a fool?

Winds pass.
I will stay planted like this palm and withstand them.
Allah, my Love, be merciful, and bring me water.

Silly Chatter

I pray a little here and a little there, all day long.
But most of my prayer is of little importance.
In fact, most of it is just chatter.

I sing silly songs to my Beloved,
gossip about the people I care about most,
and engage in inane pillow talk.

Do you think prayer must always be serious?
Do you think my time of communion with Allah is solemn?
Do you think I come before the Lord of Heaven with anything less than reverence?

Prayer is the silly chatter between friends.
I would rather risk offending the Beloved
than boring Him.

If I Had a Servant

If I had a servant,
I would command him to make my tea
and would sit in the shade and glory in the breeze.

If I had a servant,
she would keep the house clean
and my wife would have time to socialize with the other women of means.

If I had a servant,
he would carry my things to and from the madrasah,
leaving my hands empty for hugging and slapping at shoulders.

If I had a servant,
she would cook for us the most amazing meals,
which is more than my poor wife has ever done.

I thank Allah I do not have a servant,
For then I would be damned. And no servant,
no matter how loyal, is going to come and carry my soul out of hell.

You Must Move

Allah is like a hawk,
His eyes are drawn to motion.
If you don’t want Him to notice you, do nothing.

If, however, you crave His attention,
if you long for His caresses and His care,
you must move.

You must laugh like an idiot,
dance like a bridegroom,
and sing like a sparrow.

It isn’t piety that will make you irresistible to Allah,
it’s the irrepressible joy found
in simply living your life.

So sing loudly, dance wildly, speak bodly
love wantonly, give generously, pray sincerely
work hard, hug tight, kiss wet.

There’s nothing to be gained
from being small.
God is great—go and be great, too.

Vision

Oh, dear. I know that look.
Allah has come upon you.
Do come and sit down before you topple over and hurt someone.

Drink this tea.
Catch your breath.
And tell me what happened.

I remember when it last happened to me.
I was at the well, getting a drink of water.
And Allah fell upon me like a cat pounding from a roof top,
claws extended to clutch at my shoulder.

It was all I could do to remain upright.
My brain felt like it was on fire,
and I saw reflected in the well all of the worlds and their myriad creatures.

I was lucky I didn’t fall in.
And yet, in a way, I did fall in.
I fell into the mind of Allah, and I will never be the same.

It has happened before, don’t misunderstand.
But every time is different.
Every time you see something new that you did not see before.

And every time it illumines all that is shadow,
exposes everything that is a lie
and turns me once again to face Mecca in my heart.

I do not know why Allah does this to people
and you can never predict when it happens.
My advice is to see it as a blessing
rather than the uncomfortable imposition it feels like now.

But Najat does know one thing.
Once it has happened to you, you will sell everything
—even your soul—to make sure it happens again.

The Teacher's Wisdom

You come to me, and you call me “teacher.”
I make you tea and call you “friend.”
We with focused attention before Allah and we call it “prayer.”

Don’t look to me for answers. Don’t suppose for a minute
that I know what I’m doing, here. I don’t.
It isn’t my wisdom being spoken into the silence between us.

I open my mouth and the winds of heaven
move my lips, or they don’t.
When we are finished, we will be fortunate if we are both a little wiser.

I am not the teacher. I am the tea-maker.
Allah is the teacher.
You and I are both students, and always will be.

My love, if I ever get to the point where I say, “I can answer that”
please do not strike me dead.
But kindly persuade my wife to inform me that my teaching days are over.

For if I think I have any answers,
If I am foolish enough to believe that I know what I am doing
If I am ever arrogant enough to suppose that my own wisdom exceeds yours

then my usefulness in this world is at an end
and my time is better spent wetting myself and drooling into a towel
until the angel of sleep closes my eyes forever to this good life.

Najat is only skilled as a teacher
by knowing that his own wisdom is only slightly more valuable
than his excrement.

Gift

Allah’s embrace can end worlds or begin them.
Allah’s embrace can bring hope or despair.
Allah’s embrace can lead one
—kicking and screaming—to heaven or to hell.

Allah’s embrace can kindle resentment or affection.
Allah’s embrace can bring clarity or madness.
Allah’s embrace can snuff out your life or redeem it.

And the mystery of it is that these opposites
—life and death, sadness and joy, suffering and grace—
are always performed with one and the same act.

How you perceive it is largely determined
by the posture of your hand:
is it open to receive, or is it balled into a fist?

Najat knows life can be hard.
I’ve seen my share of blessings wrapped in pain.
I, too, struggle to behold all that Allah gives as a gift.

Imagination

I have no interest in proving to you
that Allah exists, or in persuading you
that His eye and His care is always upon you.

For such things do not fall into the realm of reason,
regardless of what the jurists argue.
This sort of thing involves the imagination and the heart.

I imagine that Allah is there, and He is there.
I imagine that Allah cares, and it is clear to me that He does.
I imagine that Allah speaks to me, and His voice is plainly heard.

You are quite right that I might be making it all up,
that Allah is a figment of my imagination.
I find it just as likely, however, that you are a figment of His.

Consider, for a moment, that the imagination
does not conjure up only fantasies, but might in fact
be an organ of perception, like unto the eye or the ear.

Consider, please, the fact that everything
that human beings create must first be imagined
and only then do they take form.

Are songs, stories, buildings, furniture,
clothing, food, or even children imaginary?
And yet all of these things were imagined before they took shape.

Allah imagined the world, and it came into being.
Allah imagined you, and you came into being.
It seems to me that you might, at the very least, return the favor.

Preparing the Heart

The body acts.
The mind thinks.
The heart loves.

Allah shaped the body,
Allah inspires the mind,
but it is in the heart that Allah makes His home.

All sensible people love the body
and care for it
as one does one’s own house.

An untrained mind
will believe anything
and may betray you.

But—and I think this incredible—
many people neglect the heart,
as if it were not a necessary organ.

Listen to Najat: if you have not prepared your heart,
If you have not learned to love even those things you do not love,
you are not yet prepared to welcome the Beloved.

Wake Up!

Your soul and my soul are not different things.
We behold the same glory through windows
that we either clean, or we don’t.

Your soul and Allah are not different things.
His glory is yours,
so how ready are you to shine?

This entire world radiates from the blazing heart of Allah.
Every creature is a revelation of the glory of God,
and testifies to his faithfulness and mercy.

Every moment we live
is the cry of the muezzin, calling all to prayer.
Every action is a prostration.

If you don’t live like this,
you have forgotten who you are.
Najat’s teaching is your coffee. Wake up!

Sufism

Sufism is not a religion.
It is the living, beating heart of faith,
regardless of what religion you happen to be.

Other People of the Book have Sufis,
although since they speak other languages
they have other words for them.

Religion is the husk surrounding the grain.
Living faith is the meat it protects,
like a shining pearl in its shell.

Religion is the container, the clothes, the form
that contains and provides a vehicle for
a living faith that cannot be spoken, or written down.

Do not, O Muslim, confuse Islam with living faith.
Yet living faith cannot survive without Islam,
nor can Islam survive without living faith.

But they are not the same. The practice of Islam
leads either to the soul’s entombment or its liberation.
Whether living faith is present will determine its destiny.

Sufis do not seek to form a religion—we already have a fine one.
We seek only to set Islam on fire by igniting its heart.
We seek only to make it live.

One Great Sun

The spiritual life is a purging, an ongoing discernment
between what I am clutching to greedily,
and what I have truly surrendered.

I must constantly be asking myself,
regarding all that I put my hand to,
“have I surrendered it? Is this under submission to Allah?”

For anything that is not submitted
Is a barrier between my Beloved and me.
Anything I clutch as my own steals my heart
from the One who truly owns it.

I know what you are thinking,
but believe Najat when he says
that this is not tyranny.

This is the hard work of seeing.
This is the sorting of what is Real and what is not.
This is the hard work of putting my soul in order.

The only thing that is Real is Allah.
All other things are shadows cast
by that One Great Sun.

What value are shadows?
And why should I spend my soul
To hide it away like some secret treasure only I may enjoy.

It is no treasure. Not my money, not my house,
Not my children, not my wife, not my widowed mother
Not my teachings, not the mosque, not you, my friend.

We are all shadows, and not one of us has worth apart from Allah.
If that Sun were to stop shining, all of us shadows
would disappear into black.

I clutch to nothing,
because all but my Beloved is nothing.
If I do not see that, I live in illusion.

Therefore everything must be surrendered.
And when I do, it is given back to me,
But I know it for what it is.

This is my religion. Islam means “submission.”
If I refuse to submit any one thing,
then I am a hypocrite, or I am deluded, or I am a heretic.

I submit. I surrender.
Allah help me to see
what I have not yet surrendered.

A Drop of Pain

I do not deny that there is great suffering in this world.
And what kind of Muslim would I be if I did not believe
that Allah had the power to subdue it?

Why He does not subdue it
when so many good and innocent people suffer
is a great mystery that I have not yet divined.

What I do know is this: that for every drop of pain,
there is an ocean of joy
and that I would not know one without the other.

And that is Allah’s gift and Allah’s wisdom

My own widowed mother, as much as I love her
forsakes the ocean and praises the drop
at great length, every time I see her.

Many people do this.
And this, it seems to me,
is an even greater mystery.