فكلي واشربي وقري عينا
فَأَجَاءَهَا الْمَخَاضُ إِلَى جِذْعِ النَّخْلَةِ قَالَتْ يَا لَيْتَنِي مِتُّ قَبْلَ هَذَا وَكُنْتُ نَس مَنْسِيًّا (23) فَنَادَاهَا مِنْ تَحْتِهَا أَلَّا تَحْزَنِي قَدْ جَعَلَ رَبُّكِ تَحْتَكِ سَرِيًّا (24) وَهُزِّي إِلَيْكِ بِجِذْعِ النَّخْلَةِ تُسَاقِطْ عَلَيْكِ رُطَبًا جَنِيًّا (25) فَكُلِي وَاشْرَبِي وَقَرِّي عَيْنًا فَإِمَّا تَرَيِنَّ مِنَ الْبَشَرِ أَحَدًا فَقُولِي إِنِّي نَذَرْتُ لِلرَّحْمَنِ صَوْمًا فَلَنْ أُكَلِّمَ الْيَوْمَ إِنْسِيًّا (26)
[Translation: And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, “Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten.” But he called her from below her, “Do not grieve; your Lord has provided beneath you a stream. And shake towards you the trunk of the palm tree; it will drop upon you ripe, fresh dates. So eat and drink and be contented. And if you see from among humanity anyone, say, Indeed, I have vowed to the Most Merciful abstention, so I will not speak today to [any] man.”]
This right there is the closest Ayah (verse) of the Qur’an to my heart these days. Ever since I got to listen to the detailed interpretation of Surat Maryam, it started occupying a very special place in my heart.
Maryam explicitly said “I wish I had died before this.” She was having such a hard time with her pregnancy, giving birth, and her very loud thoughts on what she would tell people about the absence of a father for her child. She was too stressed out, too devastated, too pained that she so humanly wished she were dead. And what was Allah’s response? He didn’t frown upon her, He didn’t blame her, He didn’t ask her to be patient. He didn’t go like “So I’ve chosen you above the women of the worlds and this is how you respond?”. He didn’t even decide to cut this line out when He told us her story. Because it was just so human of her to feel this way after everything she’d been through and everything she knew she still had to face. All what Jibreel told her she was expected to do then was to: eat, drink and be contented. To just remember to take care of herself. This is extremely validating on so many levels.
I feel like I have personally been made to believe that my strength lies in my ability to immediately bounce back after every fall. When in fact, so much strength does lie in the ability to simply acknowledge our hard feelings and allow them to prevail until we can be certain we’re over them. No matter how long it might take. It’s okay to admit that an experience was hard. It’s okay to pause, sit back and just stare at the ceiling – if that’s going to bring us the peace we need. It’s okay to cry, it’s okay to even whine sometimes, and it’s okay to pamper ourselves in whatever way we prefer. Most importantly, it’s okay to forgive ourselves for the terrible ideas that take over our minds in the midst of those tough times. It really is oh-kay.
Whenever I happen to go through a tough time now, I repeat this Ayah over and over again, and it somehow magically calms my insides. I so much love Maryam. I so much love this book for shedding that much light on her. She’s beautiful. And so is Qur’an.
Written on: January 10, 2020
