Love. The automatic thought when the heart is mentioned. Unless you are studying the organ in class or dissecting its parts in a laboratory, pumping blood will not be what floats to your oblongata. Unless you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Or belong to the crowd where rigidity is the way to live.
So much so is the association that one claiming heart is their favourite symbol will be linked automatically to being loving and likeable and friendly.
Hate. The direct and opposite reaction to love. There is no shape for it. It must feel lonely every so often. Its mention only coming in the bad times. Abandoned when things are flowing smoothly. Substituted when love fails and hope cannot be restored. Used as a mere replacement when alternate feelings cease to align.
Some represent it using the middle finger. Some lash out with cuss words. The best representative one can find for hate is the cross sign which reads more of dislike. Even people who like inventing would rather not be connected to it. We want to reach out giving hate the attention it craves but we are more mortified by the consequences.
Religion says, praying together brings you together. It creates a sense of brotherhood far stronger than sharing meals. In fact, Islam highly recommends the Jama’a (praying in congregation) as it warrants one higher rewards.
Standing shoulder to shoulder as many people cannot afford to touch the toes as recommended. Biggest obstacle being people who refuse to meet their little toes with other little toes. It is like they fear their little toes will be convinced to run away to a better life. The promising rewards being round the clock foot care with the independence of a compartmentalized life.
“Come,” a little toe living the good life will whisper to the desiring runaway, “here you will not be shoved with the other toes and feel crowded. You get your own room!”
They make it an impossible task by keeping their legs too close together one would think their knees were bound. As the person standing next to them, you are faced with the dilemma of extending your own legs, considering one’s elasticity can only stretch so far or leaving the floor open for shaytaan, the devil, to dance.
Some are ruthless, finding time to give you a good hit while praying because you either stepped or sat on them accidentally. They will make you anxious these ones. Give you the same feeling of waiting for your mother to get back to realize you broke her thermos. Not knowing what to expect but guaranteed you are not getting away with it.
The two of you, standing shoulder to shoulder in prayer because if your small toes touch, there might be the slight chance of sparking a feeling other than hate, fueled with contempt. None of you can afford to call a truce. None of you is ready to call a truce for the sake of Allah, who you are praying for.
Kissing strangers but not sharing the same glass of water with people you have known forever.
Prayer, believed to bring together but for the two of you, it draws you further and further apart. For the three out of five prayers circumstances force you to pray together, you lag and drag and want to be excused from it all. The other people in the equation don’t apprehend the loathing, the detesting. They stand awaiting the forever it gets you to appear to come together.
You therefore both stand, shoulder to shoulder wondering if the other will dare be the bigger person and make the small toes touch. The other person because your hardened heart is reciting in your little voice away from the obligatory Qur’an, it won’t, can’t be you.
When it is over with salaam proffered on both your sides, one of you moves back to rest their back on the wall or maybe, the more fitting reason, to make the distance greater than when you were standing shoulder to shoulder. The other, muttering words of supplication will doubt whether the other is digging daggers on their back.
Beneath, the heart is concealed by the skin. Busy pumping to the veins love, pride, pain, desire, happiness, shame, jealousy, sadness. For in the blood lies the great capacity to feel. Hate, the black sheep, finds a home time to time and determinedly courses through.
By Rehema Zuberi
https://reshonlineblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/06/cloaked/
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