The Courtyard of Peace.

You may have walked your whole life on a path; Quiet with a resolution as firm as a mountain, as silent as the dark night.

But one day, suddenly everything changes, we don’t know how and when, but we emerge a different person out of it.

This incident is a marker of change in me and the place where this has happened is the most peaceful city in the whole world…Madinah.

Every time I have been there it has brought an awakening in me.

My early years in Jeddah were marked by great turmoil and insecurity; Whenever it would be too much to bear, I would go with my injured soul to Madinah to heal. I would stand in the courtyard right opposite the gate and ask questions which kept bothering me from time to time and for which I had no answers.     

The heal would come and I would rejuvenate myself and get ready to face it over all again. It was a dream that I had one night in Madinah when I, with Huma and Kaleem who was just more than a year, had visited to pay our respects at the Prophets’ (SAW) tomb. I had dream't that I am walking the courtyard of Masjid-e-Nabawi  with my wife, child and pushing the wheel chair in which my mother was seated. I was going through a difficult time then and had no whim of this happening any time soon. I had no idea that how could I make mother come here while I was still struggling to make ends meet. Two years passed and while things improved for me, the dream slept in the inner recesses of my mind and never came to surface until the day I was pushing the wheel chair in which Mother was sitting and Huma walking beside me. It just struck me then that I had walked this path before. It took me a while to recollect that this very place and mother had appeared in my dream two years back. The dream showed itself then and a lightning ran through my own physical and emotional self. The dream had in fact fulfilled right then.  I sent my salaams to the Prophet (SAW) while my faith reaffirmed itself.

Gradually life changed and the anguish also kept changing faces and came to me each time in a new form after providing relief from the existing one. Life tested me more often than not and I faced them to my best possible. But what remained constant in my struggle was the hope that whenever I visit the city of Madinah with my injured soul there would always be hope for healing and strength for the next challenge.