Night Sky
Mash’Allaah, I found this as I was going through poems for my new poetry book. I wrote this in Sana’a, in 2005, but wanted to share it with you all, insh’Allaah. Ma’bar is still the home of my heart, may Allaah preserve Sheikh Muhammad al-Imaam and the people of the Sunnah there, Ameen. It’s funny, I wrote it all in a paragraph, but it copied over like a poem, so I said, mash’Allaah, and am leaving it just like that, insh’Allaah:
I wish I had a night sky shot of Ma’bar!
the night sky here is phenomenal,
full of cold light and shooting stars…
I remember when we first moved to Ma’bar, and how I fell in love with
night
all over again.
We had lived in Sana’a, off of a very busy and aesthetically offensive
street, for some
months, which hurt my country girl soul. In Ma’bar, most of our neighbors
did not have
electric lights, and of course the lights went out for at least two or
three
hours a night,
so it was DARK, dark like the middle of nowhere. The first night in
Ma’bar
Khalil and I
went up to the roof and sat, and I almost forgot to look up, I was so used
to seeing
nothing. But when I did, what a reward I received!!! I was looking at a
part of the sky I
had never seen before, at first I didn’t see any of the constellations I
was
used to…then
waaaay over where I least expected him, Orion showed up. And the Milky
Way…I have never
seen anything like that sprinkling of stars across the sky, twinkling like
glitter in a fine
powder. So many, many stars…I knew they were there but I had never ever
seen them like
that…and then we started seeing the shooting stars…it was like we had
our own nightly
show of them…I don’t know why there are so many here….
Sometimes wedding parties try to compete with the night sky. Here it is
tradition to shoot
off fireworks on certain nights of the wedding ceremonials…so you will
see
them shooting
up all over town, first in one place, then another…and then, there are
the
tracer
bullets…you wouldn’t think such a deadly thing could be so beautiful,
but
when you see
them shooting across the sky you catch your breath, and then, hearing the
distant sound of
the machine guns you realize the danger of the beauty….
I really miss Ma’bar, but we are in a quiet neighborhood in Sana’a now,
and I
can still sit
under the sky when the power does its almost nightly disappearing act, and
breathe in cold
mountain air, and breathe in the exhalations of the stars….
So now it is morning, and sun has finally pulled free of it’s mountain
coverings…at this
time of day, the light is like that of a soft filter, with only a hint of
the warmth to
come. The brothers rush by to the prayer with their head coverings
wrapped
over their
faces, looking like the essence of the Bedouin. Afterwards, when
it is barely
light, some of them sit and drink steaming cups of hot tea with lots of
milk
and sugar (ah,
how I yearn for decaffeinated tea!!) and watch the sun rise…Yemenis are
very good about
companionable silence- they do not find it awkward, like so many people in
our culture, to
simply sit and enjoy being with one another. Sometimes they hold hands,
or
put their arms
around each other and just sit….
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3 comments
From أبو مسلم الصومالي @abumuslimsumali
in my twitter feed:
قال الأخ حسين الشراعي -مدرس بدار الحديث بمفرق حبيش-: وهذا الإمام الفذ ذو العلم و التقى***مغارسه في مل أرض طوالعُ
له المركز العلميُّ في أرض معبرٍ***لكل فنون الخير والعلم جامعُ رفيق بطلاب الحديث و أهله***وسيف على أهل الضلالة قاطعُ
I wanted to share it here as well, BarakAllaahufeek!
Salam Alaykoem Sister,
I’m very impressed by your ability to see the beauty in things and simple things and think that you have a very positive inspirational attitude to things. Barakallahu feek for sharing your experiences with us I also moved to Libya about 8 years ago and I found my experiences to be different then what I was used to that’s why I’m very inspired by your positive attitude and being able to see the beauty in things. Although your heart is in Mabar mine certainly isn’t here and would love to move to Saudia.
Yes, mash’Allaah, we are always planning and thinking and making du’a that we will be able to return to the lands of Islaam as well, and Saudi and Yemen are at the top our our list. This is knowing that no place on earth is perfect, nor are the people of that place, mash’Allaah, but to be surrounded by Muslims and living in the lands of Islaam and struggling to gain knowledge and implement it it such a blessing amongst blessings, alhamdulillah.