Look back to where you were
how you were
why you were
kneeling by that hospital bed
while the little life left in her
left her
No sir
It gets cloudy some days
the fog never lifts
on days you can’t tell
curses from gifts
Look back to what you were
a miserable khalid with a rhyme
more broken each time
you try to make it better I’m
the you I’m speaking to
piecing together meaning
from a storm of words that makes earfall
but never reaches heart
It’s here again
loss
growing on my beating rock
like a layer of moss
green, green
and alive
just like hope
in that everliving oneness
My soul gets all the life it needs through
one drop of blood from the pool
welled into the sandals of a man
mocked and knocked and shunned
but refusing brokenness
because he saw the One
hope as long as there is life
and life
as long as there is hope
More
About a year ago, Shaykh Amin had said, “You should think about it.”
He was referring to the word “more” from the Darul Qasim motto, “In the Quest for More Knowledge”.
So I did. And very quickly I plateaued with the usual platitudes: you are never done; you are just getting started; there is no finishing the quest for knowledge, and so on.
These were good, even beneficial. But they told me that if I wanted to do the Shaykh’s advice any justice, I would have to recurse into my thinking with the spirit of “more” and with faith in the idea that the deeper the quest, the more accessible creation becomes to the seeker.
With that in mind, my problem definition became: How should I think about it?
I tried to approach it homeopathically, examining the problem to see if it would offer up a solution from within itself. That opened a door. I realized that Shaykh Amin was trying to show us something. That in turn begged that I look at it. If you think about it, to think about something was really to look at it, albeit with the mind’s eye.
But I couldn’t just look at it in any way I wanted. No. I had to stand beside the man, at his vantage point, I had to look to where he pointed; I had to use the seeing aids he had employed and calibrated.
Said differently, I had to draw on Shaykh Amin’s own insights on the moreness of knowledge. And being an amateur I had to stay within my limited understanding of those insights. So I began. With the first man, Ādam ‘alayhisSalaam.
Ādam
He was taught the names of all things by Allah the Exalted. And his quest for knowledge began in the heavens. But what made his quest intense was that he and his spouse were the only ones from the human species who had to adjust to time and space as adults. The trauma of that change must have been telling. For Ādam and Hawwa ‘alayhimusSalaam, the primary reference for all things, behaviors, etiquette, everything, was heavenly. Their quest for more knowledge paved the way for humanity to live on this planet, to live out lives with slight semblances of their heavenly existence. Some of those lives would be destined for a full blown living experience in heaven. Others would have to make the most of this planet for just a taste of heaven, courtesy Ādam. ‘AlayhisSalaam.
Nūh
His life was over nine hundred years of a quest for more knowledge. A mountain of patience and perseverance, an architectural genius and a master of wood and nail, a botanical, zoological and ecological miracle of a man who understood coexistence like none other. And just as he reaches the peak of his knowledge acquisition, his Lord teaches him his greatest and most shattering life lesson: he sees his rebellious son washed away by a wave. ‘AlayhisSalaam.
Ibrahīm
This is the man who is known as the ummah of one, a nation all in himself. His quest for Divine unity brought him to supplicate Allah to show him how He created. He was instructed to capture a bird, chop it up, mix its remains into a mash, then divide it into four parts and distribute them far and wide across the mountain ranges in the cardinal directions and then finally, to call the bird to himself. I reckon that his journey in each direction must have been months long – these men had meaningful lives that bore fruit as they concurrently embarked upon their many quests. So who knows how many months or how many years later he returned to the very spot whence his supplication rang forth. And from there he looked in all directions and called out to the quadripartite avis. And it came to him. How it came together and how much of the coming-together he witnessed was his exclusive reward, as was the moments of ecstasy that he experienced as his mind and heart connected the inner meanings of what he had seen. And such were the quests of Ibrahīm. ‘AlayhisSalaam.
Mūsa
The oral tradition has it that when the staff of Mūsa was turned into a serpent, Mūsa’s flight was not out of fear but out of ‘adab for the might of Allah. So when Allah commanded him to pick up the serpent, it is reported that Mūsa thrust his hand into its jaws and it returned to him as his faithful staff. Such was the courage of Mūsa. So uncompromising his boldness and so feverish was his pursuit of knowledge that his time with Khidr was cut short by them. ‘AlayhisSalaam.
Isa
His quest for more burns yet and is destined to resume in this world when Allah deems it time for him to return. A sincere quest that will lead him, Isa ibn Maryam, to join the ummah of his brother Muhammad ibn Abdullah SallAllahu ‘alayhi wa Sallam. ‘AlayhimusSalaam.
Muhammad
Did not all prophetic intellect and curiosity culminate in the person of our Habīb Muhammad SallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam? So complete and never-ending is his quest that during the mi’rāj, his angel companion stopped at the farthest bounds of space marked by the Lote. How Jibrīl ‘alayhisSalaam must have said, “I cannot go any further.” How then the prophet in all his humility must have stopped his advance. How Jibrīl must then have said, “…but YOU can.” And how the beloved must have been whelmed with rahmah as he stepped forward to come closer to his Beloved. No other from the human species or any other species in all of creation has passed that bounding tree. And how, in that timeless and spaceless moment, everything changed in time and space, including the essence of change itself. All this so that Muhammad, the seal of the prophets, could progress in his quest for more knowledge. SallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.
I suppose what I am trying to say is: when the Shaykh asks you to think about it, you had better think about it.
Weed Cinquain
you’ve seen
how the light shows
every blade of grass grows
differently and to different lengths
of green
Salim Chida (1947 – 2024)
He was seventeen when he left home. He watched his father standing on the platform, waving sadly as the train rolled away. He would never see his father again.
He went on to endure two years of grueling training followed by year-long apprenticeships on seagoing vessels. His career at sea spanned a little over thirty years. During that time, he commanded vessels of varying size, from general cargo ships to 270-meter long bulk carriers with a 152,000 DWT. He sailed through the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Bermuda Triangle. He weathered storms at sea. He survived freak waves off Richards Bay. He discharged cargo over three months at outer anchorage off the coast of Luanda in war-torn Angola. He commanded supply ships off the coast of Bombay rushing supplies to oil rigs during stormy weather. He fought off pirates in the Strait of Malacca. He once climbed up the main mast in bad weather to change a lightbulb while his electrical officer and Boatswain watched from the deck as the swell caused the ship to corkscrew until the mast almost touched the giant waves. He performed life-saving surgery on one of his mates before rushing him to the nearest port for medical treatment. He oversaw a rescue mission for a suicidal officer who jumped into the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii. He navigated by the sun, the stars and charts when onboard navigation equipment failed in the Arabian Sea. He weathered a near mutiny in Brazil as brazen ship-owners delayed the payment of salaries to a crew of forty. He joined his crew in prayer on the main deck when nothing else could be done as they found themselves in the middle of a strengthening hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. He escorted many a stowaway to safety and silenced officers who recommended tossing them overboard. He took a corrupt Chinese hiring agency to court in the port of Yanbu that helped dozens of expatriate day laborers get back their passports and return home. He oversaw sea burials.
In 1998, he gave it all up and moved to Iowa to be with his wife and son. She died a year later from Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. That broke him.
He drove a school bus and fought to be assigned to special ed. students. He said they were the best. He couldn’t stand being around junior high kids.
He drove a school bus until the doctors said his heart wouldn’t allow it. Then he spent more time in the garden. He did some Uber. Once he got a call from a Jehovah’s Witness priest who had a follow-up question about something they discussed during a ride. Another time, a young lady called him to thank him for picking her up in an inebriated state from a bar and for lecturing her all the way to her home about how her parents would be disappointed in her.
Then he gave up Uber. He spent more time in the garden.
On the 26th of August 2024, it took him almost twelve minutes to walk from the curb to the first rank at the mosque, typically a one-minute walk. But he still managed to get both cycles of the pre-dawn prayer. He died later that day.
* * *
The next day, I was swiping through his whatsapp messages and returning calls. One message caught my attention, from a name I did not recognize. The chat transcript showed several messages. She introduced herself and wanted to talk. She paid her condolences. She said her own father worked as Second Mate with my father on a general cargo vessel. She said she had met my father on board a ship. She was seven at the time. She remembered how kind he had been to her. She came to think of him as a dear uncle.
She tracked him down four years ago. He told her that he had a copy of the Quran that her father had gifted to him. It had handwritten notes from her father in the margins. He sent her pictures of it. She kept in touch after that.
I thanked her and said we would visit her if we ever had the chance. Then she said she needed a favor. “Anything,” I said, expecting her to ask for the copy to be shipped to her, which I would have been happy to do. Instead, she said, “Now that your Dad is gone, would you continue to read from it?”
I said I would.
On My Dear Brother Omar’s Recent Visit to Al-Quds
I wanted to surprise my family
So up and to Jerusalem I went
I touched down when the soldiers came for me
It seemed as if the questions wouldn’t end
They didn’t Every checkpoint was the same
Until I reached the room where I would stay
I rested first then went in Allah’s name
To Masjid Al-Aqsa in time to pray
Salaam in every corner of that space
Is this the spot my nabi was Imam
To lead a congregation cast in grace
Unmatched from its takbir to its salaam
The love I found on faces there eclipsed
Their grief that never passed through grateful lips
As It Is
Heed advice that tempers you khalid
So you see things for what they are
Just like that sweet prophetic prayer
That steels the heart and stills the air
Cinquain, Prophetic
if you
cannot act then
speak and if you can’t speak
at least condemn it strongly in
your heart
Lifes
Life after death:
longevity isn’t a concern
quality of life is
Life before death:
don’t miss the big hint
as you squint
at the small print
Get Up
how can you be lost
if you are exactly where
He wants you to be
no khalid you are
on your way as long as you
don’t think you’ve arrived
On Altruism
We give and often think we love to give
But hear the warner school us about giving
How can we be called altruistic if
Our contributions barely dent our living
Our paragons they come from two: one glad
To leave behind their home and wealth and kin
The other hosting them with all they had
Despite the difficulty they were in
Such was their love for him who bound their hearts
In sweet eternal brotherhood that when
He called for contributions to the cause
One gave one half, the other, everything
So khalid, swipe your card and puff and preen
You’re all the altruism you have seen
Inspired by a portion of this Tafsir session delivered by Shaykh Amin on May 5.