Leilah Usman awaits an acceptance from a university abroad so she can leave the country she never loved when she stumbles upon an ancient diary. Through the eyes of Mahrosh Irfan, she finds herself in a world so completely different from hers.
One w...
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13th June 1933
Summer has returned again and so have the mangoes. The sweaters and shawls are boarded and packed up, but I do not mind. I love the winters but I can find enough love in my heart for the sweltering month of June as well.
The heat makes it a little tiring but the days are long and I have more time. More time to read the books Walid has given me. Ammi says my reading is getting tiring - she says that there is more to do than sit with your nose in a book. But how can I tell her that it is not simple words I am reading? How can I tell her that with every page that I read of the seerah of Rasulullah ﷺ I fall deeper and deeper in love with him till I wonder to myself what took me so much time to read of his life.
The diary Walid gave me is half-filled already. I note down every word he says and sometimes, when I come home, I write a few words of my own too. There are splotches of tears on the pages and my handwriting is terrible - but I do not mind the mess.
I feel a little like a lone daffodil on a windy day; the winds rush past me and I walk down paths that are strange and a journey that is rocky. But the beauty of the world around me grips my heart and how can I not say SubhanAllah? The contentment lies deep within me; for I have tawakkul in Allah.
And with all this, how can I not be grateful? -
Mahrosh' thoughtful eyes stared at the pair of shoes whose ends peeked out from her chaddar. The intricate pattern on the khussa turned and formed patterns, in the depths of which Mahrosh let her thoughts wander and twist, all till another pair of dark sandals came under her line of sight.
She raised her head, prepared to brag about finally beating him at being the first to arrive when her gaze met a melting kulfi. Walid held it out to her, smiling as he said his salam. "It's melting-"
Mahrosh took it from him, the creamy cold delight tasting sweeter than any kulfi she had tasted before. Her truimph of being the first to arrive was diminished by the reasoning of Walid stopping to buy her kulfi but was replaced by greater happiness and gratitude.
Mahrosh decided that she did not mind the summers at all; not with the taste of the cold kulfi racing against her in its attempts to melt; with Walid walking by her side, sharing her kulfi every time she stretched it out to him, and the excitement of a lesson to be learned.
Walid's halaqas had grown more comfortable with the passing of each day. He would give time to each person who wished to speak, taking their questions and enabling an environment where none felt unheard.
On that particular day, a discussion began on a recently published poem of Iqbal's: Iblis ki majlis-e-shura; The Devil's Conference. From the ideas of imperialism in the West and the separation of religiosity from the state; till not only to Iblis but to the Western powers that were determined to keep a hold on its superiority over the majority of the Eastern world - Islam in its truest sense was a big threat; the poem discussed within a conversation between Iblis and his councilors. They reached a verse from the poem, in which Iblis was saying:
