Iman

If there was a devise to measure ‘iman’ as there is to measure temperature Saba's would be seen going up and down. Saba is sure this is the case with other average people too that their iman does not stay the same all the time. There are days when Saba's iman is so perfect that she die smiling and there unfortunate days of despair when her iman…….

It was one such day.

Saba drove through a filthy thick traffic, amidst merciless, indifferent honking and relentless downpour. It seemed as if all the vehicles were barking at each other. Pedestrians and drivers vied for every inch on the road. Weary looking vendors lined the road. It was not going to be a good day.

It had rained incessantly for twenty four hours. Thick clouds had overtaken the sky and it seemed that the downpour will never stop. Buildings had collapsed across the city. Men, women and children had died. Mothers had lost their children. Children had become orphaned. Families had become homeless. Darkness had engulfed my heart, and the sun won’t show up.

 Was there a God? Was He really there? Is all of it a test? Is it really a test? Disturbing questions enveloped her consciousness, as her car bumped on the rain damaged road.

 She looked up in despair. The divider was lined with equi-distant street lights. On either side of the light pole two rods emerged to hold bulbs for the two streets on either side of the divider. The rods were lined with pigeons that had come to sit there because of the rain. Each pigeon sat equi-distant from the other. Who had taught them to maintain such perfect distance between themselves? How did she even think that there could be no God. There was a miracle taking place right there and then even as she was questioning the existence of God.

She looked around with a smile. There was miracle all around. There was proof of God on every nanocentimeter that covered the sphere of her thought and sight. Was not her existence a miracle, were not these droplets of hydrogen and oxygen a miracle, is not the sweet voice of her children on the backseat a miracle?

A cloud cleared from her mind. Her iman came back and intact. The sun will shine. Houses will be rebuilt. Orphans will grow up. Mothers will be taken into ‘jannah’ by the beloved children they have just lost. Saba prayed that her iman may remain intact until the very moment her soul leaves her body.