A place where I share my deepest darkest thoughts!

I remember it like it was yesterday even though it was over two decades ago. There were two girls who were best friends with each other and were inseparable throughout college. The looked as different as night and day, Afshan had light hair and skin colour and she was always laughing. Bushra had long black hair and a wheat-ish complexion and she too was always happy.

They were a sight to behold as they laughed and talked together in the corridors of the college. A lot of people didn’t like them and called them cheap and other bad names but they didn’t care at all. They were good people and that is all that mattered in the end.

I had spoken to them a few times and I was acquainted with them but I wasn’t friends with either one of them. It was our second year of college and we received the new that Bushra had been shot and killed by her boyfriend. It was a shock to all of us and we gathered around Afshan to comfort her as she cried.

Bushra’s mother had picked out a pink dress for her to wear on that fateful day not knowing it was the last time she would pick out something for her daughter to wear. Her boyfriend had been her brother’s best friend and had lived very close to her house. It broke our hearts to learn that her body had been carried past his house for the final prayers and her burial. Her brother was abroad studying so he could neither attend her funeral nor take his best friend to task over his sister’s murder.

None of us knew what had actually taken place in that car that day. Had he threatened to shoot himself and accidentally shot her? Had he asked her yet again to marry him and had she insisted on ending things? Had she shot herself to prove her love for him? There were so many questions as there always are around such tragedies. Young love can often end very tragically more often than it ends in happiness.

We sat around Afshan trying our best to comfort her as she talked about her best friend and the pain of losing her, many people came to ask the questions that were not needed. As we all sat there trying to process the shock of losing such a young and promising life, others wanted entertainment. We sat with Afshan trying to get her to talk and register what had happened. There were a few people even at that point in time who wanted her to dish out the dirt on her recently departed best friend.

It made me wonder why even after someone’s death we want to focus on what they did wrong or how they were at fault for their fate. Why does it matter what actually happened that day as she was killed by the person she loved and thought loved her back? Why can’t we just accept that she has died and focus on preventing such things from happening in the future? Why can’t we help her friend remember her fondly instead of casting aspersions on the character of the deceased?

To date when I think about that lovely human being and the way her family lost her, it brings tears to my eyes and makes my heart break. It was a trauma I am not sure not just for her family but for everyone around her too. Everyone whose life she touched had to have experienced some shock or suffering. I remember someone telling me back then that she had been unable to sleep after hearing about Bushra. She had started praying because she had started to fear death and understood that it could strike at any time.

Is this perhaps why Allah allows such tragedies to happen in the first place? So that the rest of us get a wake-up call and realize that death is not far? So that we all understand that death does not strike at a certain age when we are ready and willing to leave the world, which we almost never are? Is that why I had to see an aged woman suffer through pain while a 6-month-old could not survive? Is that why perhaps a young soon to be bride died in a bomb blast close to where I was at that time?

Every death is a reminder for me that mine is not too far away. I was holding my grand father’s hand as he breathed his last along with my cousins. I have participated in ghusals and have felt my heart shake and tremble at the thought me being the one lying there one day. Then again, every death brings with it a sense of relief and gratitude.

I am still alive.

I can still change the way I live.

I can still strive to make a difference in this world to make it a better place.

I can still endeavor to be remembered as a good person.

I can still make every effort to change my destination to Jannah (Heaven).