A mother’s love you cannot repay

God bless our mothers who serve us with a second plate every single night. “Take a bit more”, she says. And yet I never hesitate because there is always barakah in her offering, her mere kindness and love. It amazes me everyday.

Sometimes I don’t like asking my mom to get things for me, as a way of not bothering her too much. Even though I know she loves it very much whenever I do so. And you can clearly see it, as though it is like if she had you when you were young in her arms once again. You call out to her in the most gentle of ways and she replies, “Yes, my dear.” And she becomes this amazing person that lits up, really, ready to be at your service. It’s very beautiful. I explicitly ask her to bring me things I need, just to see her smile once again and be the mother I always had at my service. Which she always tells me that’s what she lives for.

Your mother loves it when you call out to her―And there is an innate trust right from birth between the child and the mother. A child knows no one but his mother, and he always takes refuge in her, and only relies upon her. When he sees her, he hangs on to her and if something were to happen the first word to come out from his lips would be, “mother”. There he finds this security, provision, and her compassion.

Thought I would share, since it replayed all back to me in that moment. Never will I be able to repay her, and never will I be able to repay Allah. May Allah give our mothers well-being in this world and in the next, and may He make all affairs easy for them, their worries and concerns. Ameen. May He make us good for them every single day.

Runaway Goat: Runaway Rizq

This initially was a schooling for me. I intended to go to a livestock auction just to see how things would work out there (https://twitter.com/tariqyusufzai/status/311179492448141312). From the whole experience, I learned a lot! My brother has a little farm, and every Monday he goes to the livestock auction to buy some goats or sheep. Sometimes he brings his own stock to sell, and other times he simply buys.

It was a Monday morning when we headed out our way to the livestock auction. We arrived there in an hour time. Unloaded my brothers’ trailer and guided the animals to be registered into the auction. My brother went out to buy some chicken eggs, a couple of roosters, and dozens of quails. Yes, I do live a bit on the outskirts of the city, but close to the suburbs. I don’t live on a farm, but my brother’s farm is nearby our house. Nonetheless, where I live is quite a beautiful place.

Imagine waking up to the early singing of birds, right at Fajr time. SubhanAllah, the feeling is so mystical and magical. The roads are quiet, and to the extent where you see birds literally playing on the streets! The breeze. The trees. The grass. The birds dancing in the air. Nature is in a quite harmonious obedience to Allah, in one worship of Him. This is honourably a blessing from Allah, to live a life in such bliss! And where during the night, it is dead silence. I lived in the big cities long ago, but never have I felt my soul breathe: in and out. The dhikr, remembrance of Allah, becomes in synchronization with what you see, experience, and live. Alhamdulillah.

We went inside the building where the auction took place. There was a door that led to a place where you could see all of the animals from up top. You could see the cows, the goats, and the sheep. Now imagine hearing hundreds of cows mooing, while at the same time hundreds of goats and sheeps bleating (baAaa)! You know, this was the atmosphere! We came to the main lobby of the auction where the bidding began. There were two auctions going on at the same time, one for cows and the other for goats and sheep. We bought a couple of goats. Went out. Ate lunch. Checked the surrounding areas, since there was a flea market. Went back into the auction, bought a couple of more goats.  Stayed there for a little while just to see if anything showed up of interest. Finally after a long day at the auction, it came to an end. Ended around Maghrib time, 7ish. We paid for the newly bought livestock. Loaded the trailer and off we went to unload it at our farm.

At the farm, here we go! It was now around 9 o’clock. Take note, we are now 5 men at the farm: 4 brothers and 1 cousin. We arranged a path for the animals to get into the farm. Several of my brothers protected the path, so the animals wouldn’t run away wildly into the farm and somehow escape. So I stood beside the door. No problem, the first two goats got in fine. They were all chilled about it, went in like they knew the place. NOW, the next one coming in was panicking. This usually occurs when an animal is in prey detection mode. And mashaAllah she was a fine goat, really big and beautiful. Picture above. So as she got off the trailer, she started to panic and run. I stood by the door and held a little fence so as to guide her to the farm inside. Well unfortunately, she ran through it! The fence fell and off she ran to the end of the shed. OOPS!! I realized and followed her slowly. I wanted to go around her so she would hopefully return back. But no, subhanAllah the window just happened to be open.

And right there at that moment she jumped and she was free willy.

First Attempt

So I start running. The fields behind the farm are a couple of miles long and she will keep running if we don’t catch her as soon as possible. While running I tell my brothers and cousin, “She is gone, she jumped through the window!!” I got out of the farm and sprinted like never before. My brother and cousin followed me. It’s 3 men vs. 1 goat. I take the far left of the field, my brother the middle and my cousin the far right. Our plan was to surround her, the best plausible solution to this unexpected problem. My two other brothers were behind us, but not properly equipped so they stayed behind thinking we will catch her. “No problem”, they thought. Let me explain to you the condition we were in.

It was around 9, getting late. Super dark. My brother and I spent a day at the auction, he was tired and so was I. The weather was not playing along, cold as it was. The field was terrible: muddy, slushy, watery, and icy. Also when one field ends, there is usually a big creek between the fields. And guess what? This one was filled up with water. It was impossible to jump over it, and thinking of crossing it in that cold weather while the water was deep? Nope, not a good idea at all!

As I am running on the left, not knowing how “awesome” the condition of the field was, I slipped and dived straight forward into the muddy field. ahaha. My brother laughs, and my cousin whom I think didn’t even see me begins to laugh as well. 😛 But nonetheless, I felt like a hero in a battle field. Got up, went manly about it and continued on with the chase. My cousin sees her on his side close by, so my brother and I run towards him. Bad move. But anyway we saw her in the creek filled with water. Now we are thinking she wouldn’t be able to swim, and luckily we thought our cousin would jump in and grab her. But she was more than we expected, she crossed the creek like a fish. She ran away and off to the second field. My brother decided to jump into the water and cross it. Cousin tells him, “The water’s too cold, don’t do it. You will freeze yourself!”. But off he went! Boots off, socks off, pants folded. He crossed the water and 10 seconds later into the field, returned back lol! I, also was in the “zone”, did the same but with boots on. I didn’t completely cross the water though I dipped in slowly, and right when I felt the water and the cold running through my legs, I got out! We all decided to give up and let her go. My cousin was laughing about the whole situation. My brother who bought the goat was frustrated, tired, and cold. He was done. I thought about it for a while as we returned back to the farm, this wasn’t meant to be. And I kept telling them, even when they knew it.

We came to the farm in good health, alhamdulillah. My two brothers who stayed behind, heard our story and our crazy experience. So we decided that we should really get her, we all thought who know what tomorrow people will say if they hear about the story. Lol. “5 men who couldn’t catch a single goat! Ahhaha!”  So we decided to take this to another level. We packed up like bears. Proper clothing, proper booting, socking, hats, gloves etc. No way was she going to escape from us now! We are gone goat hunting at this late evening, and we will find her inshaAllah! It was around 9:30ish.

Second Attempt

5 men, 1 goat. We crossed the first field, took a shortcut to avoid the filled up water creek. Separated into three branches: left, middle, and right. One of my brothers brought a flash light with him. It was pretty funny because he was actually tracing her footsteps, lol. So I asked him, “Are you seriously going to find the goat by tracking her?” I don’t remember his reply. But he did reply with a nice comeback at some point, I usually make fun of his flip phone so he said to me “Can your ‘stupid’ brick phone track and find her through the GPS?”. LOL, so hilarious I couldn’t believe he said that! So we continued, literally for 30 mins walking straight down the fields. Walked and walked. My brother whose goat ran away, looked constantly on his right and left. If something moved by, he was like “That’s it!”. He kept doing it for a few times, and each time heads would be turned towards that direction. But we still continued. I took my phone out just to take some pictures of the field, and that’s when I realized I received a miscall. I called my cousin, and he tells me they found and caught her. I yelled out to my brothers way behind me, “They, caught the goat! They caught the goat!!”. I joined them, but we now have no clue where they are. So we decided to go left and hopefully meet them somehow. Walking towards “their direction” I fell again once more, this time it was in an unexpected pot-hole of water!! hehe but alhamdulillah we met them right afterwards.

Here she was. The moment was unexplainable. The relief, the success, the joy, the teamwork, the effort, the struggle, the brotherhood, the love, the trust, the awesomeness, the experience, the schooling, the knowledge, the wisdom etc.  What a beautiful moment it was. Alhamdulillah we finally caught her!! And off we went back to the farm. And this my friend was another struggle in the making!! She wouldn’t budge. At some point she would move, and at times she would completely halt. At point, we carried her until it was too tiring for us. So we decided to go with her when she would and to stop when she would stop. Again, the fields were not that great. We had a good fight most of the time pushing her, cause at some point she took too long in not moving at all. At 10:15ish we arrived at the farm. Tightly holding on to her, she was guided to her little area inside the barn. Finally at last! It was over, alhamdulillah!! Happy faces, happy results. 🙂 We unpacked our gear and off we went home. The story spread in the house, to relatives and friends close by. I am not making this look like we have achieved a great achievement lol, but it was to be told LOL! My friends found out through fb & twitter, school and jummuah, and finally when I gave my halaqa at our local mosque talking about sustenance:

“SubhanAllah the whole experience taught me a lot in terms of schooling, spending a day at the livestock auction; in return as well at the farm. But at the same time, I came to understand what Rizq, sustenance, means. That no matter what and where you are, Rizq will come to you if it’s meant for you. You could spend hours! Be that you are tired, cold, hurt, unfortunate, desperate, hesitant, in a state of worry and struggle, If Allah willed it, it will come to you no matter what. Or you will have to run for your Rizq, for your sustenance! Know that everything was written for you, recorded before all creation. The pens have been lifted and the pages have been dried. And in that record, Allah willed for us to chase that goat, to bring her back to the farm. To our sustenance, to our Rizq.

Our runaway goat was our runaway Rizq.

In another sense Allah says, “Or who is there that can provide you with Sustenance if He were to withhold His provision? […]” – [67:21] So she could have kept running and running, and destiny would have prompted something to happen in between, and we would have never been able to catch her. So many possibilities to consider. If Allah withholds it, it’s done deal. Respond properly. And Go home.”

Published on: Mar 27, 2013 @ 5:28