An Invetiable Irony

By: Saiful Islam

Taken from:  Al-Mizaan - Issue 4

It was a stone-cold setting, the graveyard, true to the image one conjures when one thinks of death, that inevitability which will dawn on every human being.  Rain trickled down lightly, assisting the mushiness in the already soft soil.

Walking through towards the burial site, I glanced over the graves, thinking of all those men and women who lived as though they would never die and eventually died as though the they had never lived.  How their arched backs which would walk on this earth with pride had been broken in a single stroke which resulted in them being subsumed by mud, stone and water six feet under.  How those legs which would walk towards wine, women and worldly work, were now being shattered to pieces by those two angels carrying gargantuan chains.  

All these thoughts immersed my mind until that is, when I stood over the eight by 4 metre whole dug for a brother whose time had, on time, run out.  His face was seen before he was lowered, that jolly and joyful head which once laughed had become a stone-cold lifeless mass.  The body was lowered, with each person reciting the Shahadah, some reciting Surah Ikhlas and others simply stood there, glazed.  Each person came and helped throw the soil over the coffin.  Again my conflicting contemplations were making me cry inside.  This will be my state, I will be seeing my Lord! But I will first face Munkir and Nakir.  My deeds will be weighed, will it be the beautiful damsels of Jannah which will be shown to me or the burning pits of Jahannam?

With these thoughts blazing across my head, my brother nudged me and handed to me the spade.  I considered myself very strong not very long ago, but those same swollen arms were trembling and suddenly felt heavy.  And why wouldn’t they?  I was helping to bury a man who would face those unseen things which are beyond any human power and of course controlled by that Power, which is All-Powerful. After assisting the burial process, I was told to hand over the spade to the person next in line.  I walked back a few feet away from the would-be grave.  I could not lift my head.  My beard was soaking in my tears, which were not shed out of sadness for the decesased, but rather  because of the mud which was being trampled upon.  The Almighty had created us from this very mud, fashioned us into intelligent beings to obey Him and seek His pleasure, and it was now this very mud which was being trampled upon in order to place clay, beneath clay.  The irony of life.  But why the sadness?  

We prepare ourselves for the future, the worldly we preserved

Forgetting the meeting with the One, His Laws we unobserved…

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