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Qura’an Shareef (gathering the Shaheed)

Posted on 31 January 2012 by Tea Server

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Quran Shareef (Shaheed)
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Let me start off by saying I apologize for putting this aside for a day, in which I could have maybe conveyed this message to maybe a few more people. I also want you to know this blog post comes in response to a recent conversation I had with a few people on twitter. Since 140 characters is sometimes a lot less space to convey everything, I’ll use this space to answer as much as I can.

Whats the issue

Two weeks back me and my friends made a trip to Do Dariya (a location if you head west of Sea View, Karachi), only to realize that this place has pages of the Holy Qura’an and other religious documents scattered on and under the stones like it was garbage. Needless to say we were shocked at how religious and pious we may seem yet we look the other way when actual religious matters are brought to our attention. People walked around these pages, over the stones.. Minding their own business and pretending this issue didn’t exist, all they cared for was their picnic and catching fish.

We found complete set of Qura’an Shareef’s not only on the rocks and underneath it, but in bags and sacks near the water, we also found a huge dump of the sacred pages on the very end of Do Dariya, where usually the gutter lines open up in the sea, it’s not only immoral, disrespectful but also a view into how much we value our very own religion. We also found a huge load of Praying mats (Ja’a Namaz), Prayer beads (Tasbih), Praying caps, religious flags (with Ayah’s printed on them) and alot of stuff from Mazaa’rs.

Our prediction

We’re suspecting we’ll be finding alot more of these right after 12th Rabi-ul-Awal. It’s sad to see all these religious items going into the trash instead of being used again, or recycled.

Who does this sort of stuff?

There are actually two main characters to this. Us the general public, and small madarsas.

It’s a general opinion that Shaheed Qura’an Pages should be fed to the sea, and that is one way of taking care of it.. What people donot know is that it is one of the few ways, and each method has it’s requirement. People generally throw these off the “Neti Jeti” Bridge & fly overs.. Except these pages end up floating around places like Do dariya and sea view.

On the other hand, we’ve been told truck loads of these Shaheed Qura’an Shareef pages have been dumped near Do dariya and other such places, without any proper checks or laws.. It’s actually not even the madarsa’s fault sometimes, these low budget madarsa’s give their load of Shaheed Qura’an Shareef to truck drivers, who in the end dump it in the sea, needless to say it’s not the deep sea, where it actually should be.

Whats the proper method?

  1. If a page or part of a page of the Qura’an Shareef or any other religious document is considered Shaheed, the best way is to bury it, this way the page decomposes naturally.
  2. If you find a Shaheed page or part of a page of the Qura’an Shareef that is barely readable and not in a condition that it could be restored, it’s supposed to be dropped into the deep sea, my focus here is the deep sea, so that the paper either decomposes or is consumed by the creatures of Allah, as the Almighty wishes.
  3. The third and the last resort is burning the Shaheed pages, this is mind you the very last resort and should only be practiced if the Shaheed pages are beyond the stage where they could be restored or in a state that they would scatter even more if dropped in the sea.

How can I help?

First of all, try to use the methods I’ve mentioned above to take care of a Shaheed Qura’an Shareef or its pages. Secondly if you can, please do volunteer to help clean the shores, or any other places possible that you find may contain Shaheed Qura’an or it’s pages/parts. Form a team and clean this up. Indeed Allah as our witness we would be trying to do the best in our ability to prevent any azaab or the wrath of Allah.

Try to educate people about disrespectful behavior and tell them of their responsibility.

There’s a whole bunch of contact methods you can use to know more of what we found there, and if you’d like to join me and my friends on our next trip to this cleaning, you can find all of them below.

We’re planning to visit Do Dariya or sea view or any other location we might come to know of, every first and last Sunday of the month, Inshallah.

Jazak Allah for taking the time to read through this, drop me a line if you have any more question, I’ll answer them to the best of my knowledge and ability.

If you find any errors in this post, please do let me know so I can fix them, I m only a human and it’s only natural that I might make a mistake.

Syndicated from: dehog

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PROMISE ME

Posted on 22 January 2012 by Tea Server


I have been thinking for a long time. Now my mind can take it no longer. I slowly rise from my seat and with heavy steps move to the window; outside, the world looks as bleak as my room. I can partially see my reflection in the window glass. Are those my own tears? The warmth on my cheeks tells me they are. I wipe them with the back of my sleeve. I put my hand on the glass. It feels cold, just like the environment around me, Iike the chilling frost inside me. I think of those who are my beloved yet far away from me, my wife and my daughter.
It all started five years ago. On account of my demanding job I was posted to Gilgit. Accompanying me were my wife Aisha and our eight-year-old daughter Maham. Our belongings had already been transported to our destination. Now it was just the three of us riding in our car. We had completed half our journey. The road had started to bend and curve as we entered the hills. Maham was sleeping in the backseat while Aisha was beside me in the passenger seat. The exotic scenery that surrounded us enchanted both of us.
I don’t know what came over her, she suddenly asked me
‘Usman, how much love do you have for your family?’
Completely taken aback by her question I pointed to a mountain in the distance and replied jokingly
‘My love for you is greater than that mountain’. i am serious,’ she replied.
I searched her face for that playful look or that twinkle in the eye but the expression on her face told me that she was not in a mood for humor. I inquired why she was acting like that she said that she could not help feeling as if a disaster awaited us.
‘Stop being such a pessimist, I want you to know that I shall never let any harm befall my family. That is a promise’ I admonished her.
She seemed somewhat satisfied by my answer,
We stopped for a quick lunch and moved on. Maham was trying to count the number of trees that zoomed by while both of us were enjoying her antics. All of a sudden hell broke loose. The strip of road ahead was covered with frost. As I took a turn, the car skidded over the slippery surface. I rammed the brakes but to no avail. I could only hear the screams of Aisha and Maham as our vehicle toppled over and fell into the abyss by the road. The world turned topsy-turvy for a second and with a thundering crash all became still.
It took me a short while to regain my senses. It was Aisha’s screams that brought me out of shock. I looked sideways and realized another horror stood before me. Somehow the car had been miraculously saved from falling off the cliff stopped by a huge tree. Had it not been for that tree, we would have surely been dead by now. But still we were about ten feet below the level of the road and beneath us was nothing but a tree trunk and beyond that a mass of air that was very deep.
The car was lying on its side. The driver seat was upwards and the passenger seat was towards the bottom. The door of Aisha’s seat had been torn open and even though both of us were wearing seat belts she was dangling in the air, halfway and screaming her head off. My first impulse was to reach out and grab her.
I was still strapped to my seat. With one outstretched arm I held on to Aisha’s hand and with the other I clung to the seat. For a second my vision looked at what lay beneath Aisha and my heart skipped a beat. I could see gray snow capped peaks hundreds of feet below waiting to claim a victim. And if I let her go she would drop to her death. But even though I tried with all my might I could not haul her up. Beads of perspiration were appearing on my forehead. Blood oozed from one of my hands, some broken shard from the shattered windscreen had probably cut it.
‘Usman, please don’t let go! Please don’t let go! I don’t want to die! Aisha pleaded in a panic stricken and desperate voice. I tried to concentrate but my strength was failing me. I could feel her hand slipping through mine.
’No! Pull her Up!’ my mind said.
‘I cant !’ my body replied.
My grip further loosened.
‘Sorry Aisha’ I said through clenched teeth, so quietly that only I could hear it. Her hand wrenched through mine and with a heart splitting shriek she plunged below. I will never forget her expression, those eyes widened in terror, the lips opened in a scream of protest. I closed my eyes to block out the scene of her death but somehow my mind perceived it, her body a speck of red and white, lying on the jagged rocks below. She was gone. The promise I had made only hours ago had been broken already.
Maham had received a fatal brain injury. She went into a coma and after a three-day struggle with death she too gave up. Thus my family, which was the only asset I had, was lost. I was all alone in this world.
Suddenly I am jolted back to the present. Evening is approaching; pulling on my coat I walk out of the lodge. The gray, misty streets seem un- welcoming. My breath comes out in white puffs. The wind picks up slightly, ruffling my hair.
I slowly drag my feet towards an unknown destination. Memories of Aisha and Maham once again wash over me, some painful but most of them fond. My heart seems to be splitting up. Tears start flowing from my eyes. This time I let them come. The saliva in my mouth turns sticky. The mucus in my nose starts running. I kick a can in front of me and it goes cartwheeling down the lane and out of sight. I cannot hold it back any longer and scream:
‘Why didn’t the car fall altogether? Why am I left to agonize over the dead? Why didn’t I die with them? In fact I am dead, I may be breathing but that does not make me alive. Those that made me alive are no longer. Suddenly the winter sky bursts into a confetti of white snow.


But the sorrow I hold inside myself is cold, colder than the snow itself.
                                                                                                        
Dated: 21st Feb, 2001
Syndicated from: Predicament of My Life

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Analgesia

Posted on 07 January 2012 by Tea Server

(Note: Twoand a half years ago, I read a short story by Kanza Tariq. That story has beenthe basis of loose inspiration for this one. However, aside from inspiration, Icredit her story with nothing else. This piece of fiction has been writtenentirely by me, and is a work of my own imagination.) 

The room is dark. My grandmother’s snores are loud, rasping. Ineed to cross her room to get to the hallway leading to mine. I’ve lived inthis house for seventeen years, I can walk through it eyes closed. Buttonight, there is a suitcase laid out on the floor. My grandmother has beenpacking for a visit to Lahore. But I don’t know that. So I walk forwards inoblivion and meet the suitcase. I stumble. I fall. My ankle hits the metalposts of my grandmother’s bed. The movement rocks the bed; she snores evenlouder in response. 
My ankle throbsrelentlessly. Bone struck metal, and now there is pain. Vicious, raw pain. I want to scream, I want to scream, I wantto scream. But I cannot. My grandmother is sleeping here. I cannot scream,even though the pain makes me want to.

I sit on the floor, thedarkness swallowing me. I cradle my ankle gently with both hands, tenderly,soothingly. I rock back and forth, tears streaming down my cheeks in uncheckedrivulets, dripping off my chin and landing on the plane of my chest. The painsubsides. I stand up, hobble forwards a step. The pain floods back. The moonlightfiltering in from the window illuminates the hallway.  I take another step. Sharp, searing pain. Ipause. The pain melts away with the cessation of movement. I look at thehallway. Look at my bedroom door, standing wide open. I get down on my handsand knees. I crawl.

                                                              *           *           *

My phone buzzes suddenly, persistently.I look at the screen. It’s you. We’ve been fighting, and we haven’t called eachother for ten days. I haven’t called because I’m terrified of saying more naïve,blundering things that will drive us further apart, widen the cracks in ourrelationship. You haven’t called because you’re not sure whether you still loveme anymore.

We talked on text yesterday,though. You messaged me, asked what I was up to. I replied that I was drivinghome from the parlour, that I’d gotten myself waxed for the first time. ‘Did it hurt?’ you ask. ‘Yes.’ ‘Good. I’m glad.’

You don’t know how I reactedbecause I didn’t message you after that. I switched my phone off and cried weaklyfor six hours, on and off, like a leaking water tap dripping sporadically. WhenI powered my phone on this morning, there was nothing from you. No text, no call.

But now you’re calling. Andhope flowers in my heart, bursting open, uncurling its velvety petals. Buddinghope. Pulsating hope. Hope that you’re calling because you’ve realized that youstill love me, that you can still be the man that I fell in love with two yearsago; a man who used to buy me flowers and chocolates without any reason ofoccasion to justify the action, a man who would cradle me at even the smallestounce of pain, like a paper cut or fingernail breaking, a man who would startbreathing more audibly every time I entered the room and smiled knowingly,sexily.

I pick up. Your voice isclear and sharp. I wish it wasn’t, because then I could pretend that I misheardyour words and blame the phone connection. But it it’s not the connection, andit’s not my hearing. “I don’t think weshould be together anymore.”  I wouldargue with you, plead with you, but I can hear the finality in your voice, andit’s that conviction in you that destroys me. I can’t fight when you’ve decidedthat there’s nothing worth fighting for.

I close the phone. I kneadmy knuckles into my chest. The petals of hope have shriveled, dead, morose,blackened things. And there is pain blooming now, soft, puncturing pain, tricklingthrough my nerves, pooling right here, in my heart.

                                                            *           *           *

He stands, scuffing hisjoggers against the earth, clenching and unclenching his fingers. He is bored.Everyone else is on the far end of the field, moving figures chasing after thefootball. They haven’t come this way at all for the past twenty minutes. He’stired of waiting in vain for a ball that looks like it’s never going to come.He’s tired of having to wait for something as useless as a ball. If it was upto him, he’d be in his room right now, studying for the upcoming SAT andworking on his Common App essay. But his parents want him to be more athletic,so here he is instead, dressed in shorts that are exposing his scrawny knees,made the goalkeeper because he always gets in the way of his teammates when he pursuesthe ball. He sighs, puffing up his chest and blowing the air out, exaggeratingthe noise. But there is nobody around to hear him. His shoulders slump.

“Hamza! Hamza!”

He looks up as several ofhis teammates cry his name, their voices shrill. A boy is racing towards him,expertly maneuvering the ball. His eyes are focused, his smile dazzlingly confident.He knows he can get the ball past Hamza. And he is right. Hamza dives wildly.The ball shoots past him, over his head, colliding with the net wall of thegoal. Hamza stands up slowly, gingerly, meticulously. The movement causes himpain. He looks down at himself and understands why. His knees and elbows arescraped, the skin torn off, clinging to him in tiny, fleshy little pieces. Hebanged his ankle against a rock during his lunge. He looks up and meets theeyes of his teammates and comprehends even further why there is such agonizingpain. Their furious, annoyed glares bore into him. He has to turn away, shieldhis eyes. But even then, there is no escape. Even then, he can still feel theirhostility, the incessant burn of that lingering, shameful pain.   

                             *           *           *

I am thirteen years old. Myfather stands beside me, tall, imposing, unyielding. I don’t want to do this,but he doesn’t care. He thinks I should learn to ride a bicycle, and because he thinks so, then there can no more ifsands or buts about it. He orders me sharply to mount the bicycle. I mumbleweakly, “I don’t want to do this.” He hears me, but he doesn’t listen. He foldshis arms, taps his foot impatiently, the sole of his polished shoe striking thepavement. Tap, tap, tap. His eyes areblue stones. I hate him right now, more than anything, but I also know it’s notreally me that despises him, it’s just the fear of pain polluting me this way,corrupting my love.

I do as he says. “Now pedal,”he instructs, and I obey. My throat feels thick, the saliva drying inside. Theflat gray of the road transforms into a moving blur, the trees on both sides whippingpast. The wind slaps at my face, making my hair billow, my clothes flutter. Thecoldness of it feels delicious, jolting me awake, causing my eyes to waterslightly. I am flying. I feel exhilarated, but the excitement is tainted withpanic. Because I’m wobbling, because I know that despite how smoothly I’mcycling right now, this bicycle isn’t really within my control. It’s onlyhumouring me, putting up with me, and the moment it has had enough, it’s goingto throw me off its back, like a teasing, untrained colt.

A fence is looming up, solidand painted white. I need to turn. I must turn. I stare at the fence as itdraws even closer, at its slats of wood, the green, green grass lying beyondit, fresh and enticing. I’m enraptured. I’m like that stupid deer that’s caughtin the headlights, the one that’s going to get run over if it doesn’t act. ButI can sympathize with the deer now. For the first time in my life, I can putmyself into its shoes – oh wait, pardon me, I mean hooves. Sorry deer, for not understanding your plight till now. But now I can. Ohyes, I can.

My father screams at me toturn. I feel like laughing, wildly, breathlessly, mirthlessly. Does he really think I have that muchcontrol?

Crash. I careen into thefence, striking it, banging against it, soaring over it, powerfully,majestically, like an eagle, before landing in a crumpled heap on that meadowof bright grass. I land on my wrist; I hear a sickening crack. My entire facefeels numb, my limbs paralyzed in shock. I open my eyes. The grass in front ofme is sullied red. Blood red. My blood.

One hour later, I’m stretchedout on clean hospital sheets as an African-American doctor with intelligentbrown eyes leans over me. The needle of the injection he is holding aloftgleams coldly, evilly. Prick. And there is pain. Pain from the injection. Painfrom my injuries. Pain from the indignity of my fall and subsequent flight overthe fence. But most intensely, pain over how tragically short it was; that justas I was beginning to believe I could fly, reality inexorably intervened and punishedme cruelly for believing in such futile, unproductive thoughts, such whimsical daydreams. 
Syndicated from: Random Ruminations

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Shades of Pakistan

Posted on 28 December 2011 by Tea Server

I know, when we are not in Pakistan, we think about it day and night. We miss it every moment. Probably because we witnessed good times when Pakistanies in Pakistan were like a big family, it was so much fun – there was no violence, suicide attacks and foul play!

In the past three visits here, things have gone from bad to worst. I will start off with people, here I mean: Pakistanies living in Pakistan because it’s the people who make a whole lot of difference. Majority of the Pakistanies in Pakistan are more materialistic than anybody anywhere in the world these days. Money, money, money and money is all you get to hear, at all levels from all age groups. Another thing I noticed is that the criterion of respect in Pakistan is “showing off money” however, in some of the countries that I have been to, criterion of respect is education only.

In Pakistan, from very poor to the very rich – all act like savages from the dark ages. I said Salam to an elderly man and a woman at two separate occasions and both looked at me ridiculously as if I have come from some other planet and I’m speaking tongues of some sort that they have no clue of. I will never comprehend this attitude. I escaped accident twice because people driving cars drive them like Rhodeo Bulls apart from the fact that Islamabad does NOT have footpaths or pedestrian pathways except along the main roads.

Here everybody loves to insult and is used to being insulted. A huge majority of Pakistanies in Pakistan do NOT know “App – Janab” instead it’s “Tu-Tarakh”, loose talk and verbal diarrhea. They don’t know what respect is anymore – everyone’s trying to outcompete another in accusing and insulting the other. They also do NOT have any clue of the importance of morals and ethics in Islam (Islam is the most abused and over-rated word in Pakistan). Moral and ethical degradation is the NEW national character of the majority of Pakistanies in Pakistan, particularly in Islamabad.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe anymore in what these majority of Pakistanies in Pakistan say irrespective of their age or social status. Pakistanies in Pakistan have torned me apart.  At a very fast pace and with great ease they have been successful to ruin the perception, belief and pride, I hold for them. From a domestic help (who are running a masee- mafia sector-wise and are very corrupt, kam chor and love gossips – I literally had to tell her not to do backbiting or she will lose her job here) to a beggar and from a politician to a bureaucrat – they are all alike.

In all this shock and awe, I saw a middle aged man who was surrounded by people, young and old. He had fallen down across from our house and seemingly had an epilepsy attack. He gained sympathy from all. Passersby massaged him and within 5 minutes he started acting normal, freshly cooked meal and fruits were served alongside cash and this one show raised 300 to 400 rupees in 30 minutes for him. In addition, I called Edhi ambulance (they do NOT run an emergency service for Islamabad, I was told by them) and other ambulance services and the man said he doesn’t want to go to the hospital but he be given money to buy medicines only. A week later, I saw this same man in another street doing the same drama and afterwards counting money. I was shocked. This is how he earns his living! Now, what if some genuine person has an epilepsy attack – what will be the reaction?? I, for one, will think of it as yet another drama – it seems like the recreation of the story: The Boy who Cried Wolf! These acts have lead to the suffering of a genuinely scorched souls around us which we might never indentify!

Living in darkness leads to losing direction and same is the case here! Cheating, deception and manipulation is the name of game here and people have become very good at it!

Why we can NOT be this creative (the epilepsy guy) to find truth and find goodness?

Syndicated from: sarahinsouthkorea

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