Roses on the Moon

Is it me or does the moon look really sad tonight?

I came back from office just in time for aftar. I watched TV, more of the earthquake coverage and after saying my Isha prayers, I came to my room. It’s taken me a whole week just to notice that the paintings on my wall are misbalanced due to the earthquake. All this time I have been too tired and now I am too indifferent to set them right. Let them stay.

So I turned off the lights and pulled up the blinds to see if the moon had made its way into my window. It hadn’t. I kept looking out of the window without blinking for a long time. It was then that the silence in the room and the silence within reinforced each other. Silence is very welcome when all you hear the whole day is how many people got killed. But silence can be cruel. Silence gnaws at the façade you construct around yourself. Silence brings out the cries you’ve silenced within you. Silence can be so maliciously loud sometimes & Silence makes you realize that what you’re looking for doesn’t exist.

And so I write tonight of a moon I saw seven years ago in Ramzan. My family and two other Pakistani families decided to have our iftar together in this mosque we had heard of. Its foundations are in the Red sea and when you stand in the mosque you stand on the sea, on the waves beneath. I was the eldest amongst the kids and a girl. So naturally while the boys were running around the dictates of my purdah proscribed me from any such activity. I then wandered to this corner of the mosque. The image is still unsullied in my mind. The moon unlike tonight was glorious. The waves were gentle and the night was balmy. It was in that moment that I prayed that some day, in not so distant future; I could come to that very place with my husband.

What does Allah ji do with dreams that don’t come true? I know we will be rewarded for our unanswered prayers but what about dreams? Dreams are different from prayers arent they?

I have dreamt and I have prayed. Lord knows I have! I used to dream of having a family of my own, my own little home. Every girl dreams that, no? I used to watch little boys and girls play and run around Masjid-ul-Haram and Masjid-un-Nabi and I wished that my kids could be so lucky. And I wanted my kids to have braces so they had perfect smiles, unlike mine.

Silence tonight made me realize how useless my dreams are and how irrelevant to existence. And yet, while I exist to hurt, I hurt to exist. So tonight I have made a decision I should have made a long time back. I know this wrong decision is being made for all the right reasons. I should have made it a long time ago; it would have saved my parents and me a lot of anguish. But I had never before in my life confronted such silence. And this silence tonight taught me that there really are no roses on the moon.