ABOUT THIS BOOK
Description
A young man was sitting in a corner, crying, while two other guys were trying to comfort him. Whenever one of them touched his shoulder, he pushed him away, and when the other touched him, he pushed him away too.
“Come on, what is this? It is as if you are not even a man,” one of the young men said.
“Please, leave me alone and let me cry… maybe it will make my heart feel lighter. Khairat and I have been together for eight years, but now they want to separate me from her just because they saw that I have no money,” the young man said, crying bitterly.
“You just have to be patient. Everything only happens if Allah has destined it. Maybe she is not your wife after all,” the other young man said.
The crying boy lifted his eyes and glared at the one who spoke, then said, “Is that what you will say? So now, will you give me the money for the bride price and marriage expenses if I ask and they refuse me? It is simply my poverty that made me lose Khairat,” he said, still crying.
“Please, Safwan, be patient. Everything only happens if Allah wills it. Do not work yourself up,” the other one said.
“Please, leave me alone… just go and leave me. You guys will not understand how I am feeling. Death means more to me now than anything else,” Safwan said through tears.
“I know how you feel. Wasn’t Aliya married off just two months ago? Everybody knows I loved Aliya, but I had to let go because I had nothing to offer if I married her. It even got to the point where, whenever her family saw me, they would say they wanted nothing to do with a poor man. We just have to be patient. If Allah brings work for us, we will find women who will marry us,” said one of them, whose name was Usman.
“When will we even get work? Three whole years after finishing our degree, and still no job. If a person does not study, they say it is because he has no education. But here we are, we struggled, we studied, yet nobody is willing to help us or give us a job. Now it is only people with connections who get work,” Habib said angrily.
“At least your case is better, since your uncle is well-off,” Habib said to Safwan, who was still crying.
“Maybe we should go to him and beg him to help you with the money to take to Khairat’s family?” Usman said to Safwan.
Safwan raised his red eyes and said, “Our uncle? Even if we were dying of hunger, would he help us? And you think he will agree to give me money for marriage? Honestly, I cannot go and disgrace myself just to be insulted by that man.”
“But that your uncle is really terrible. Please, he has no mercy at all,” Habib said.
“I have known for a long time that he has no good character. Remember the time he saw us coming back from school while he had picked up his own children, yet he refused to offer us a ride? Well, Allah knows best. Maybe he thinks we are the ones who chose poverty for ourselves,” Usman said.
Safwan said nothing more, because what was troubling him was something else entirely. He was simply missing the love of his life. Right now, he was thinking that because he had no money, he had lost everything. He lost his two sisters too because they did not have the money to pay their hospital bills.
He let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes while his best friends continued talking about his uncle’s bad behavior. Slowly, he raised his head and looked at them, then said:
“When will all this suffering end? When will we too become rich like other people? When will we have value in the eyes of people?”
He asked them all these questions.
Quietly, Habib said, “As for us, how will we even become rich? Who will help us? The rich only care about themselves. Look at our neighbor, he does not even pay zakat. Last Ramadan there were days when we had nothing decent to break our fast with, while they were enjoying themselves. This world… wallahi, I am tired,” Usman said, almost in tears.
“I wish I were among the rich. I would have helped the poor. I would have made many people happy. But instead, Allah did not make me wealthy…”
Comments
Sign in to comment.