Part 291 – An Author’s Note

As narrated by Aara

Life never stops surprising us. No matter how many tests we go through and how hard things may be there’s always something good that comes our way. For every sadness, there’s more than one joy. For every heartache, there’s more than one cure.

How long you allow that wound to be open before those tiny droplets of medicine fall in, is up to you. We drown ourselves in sorrow everyday, wasting the air that we breathe in for free , and take for granted, on unnecessary tears and excessive grief. This is not our purpose in this world, not at all.

We are all a part of the bigger picture, just sometimes we don’t see it that clearly. And that’s okay too. We are human, we fall, we make mistakes and I guess if we didn’t, we wouldn’t know the extent of the faith that we had in the One who controlled us all.

Laeeka and Riza had a baby that doctors told her she’d never have. But she did. Because HE wanted her to. Because Life and Death is in his hands.

Immy’s big family was underway…Maariah knew that she was pregnant but almost fell off the examination table when she went for her ultrasound and the doctor happily announced that she was expecting triplets!

Zainab and Arshad bounced back from an almost broken marriage simply by her acknowledging that she needed to find her way back to her Creator.

Thinking about it, left me awestruck, spellbound, enthralled. Life wasn’t amazing- my Allah is.

Everything was becoming so much clearer, so much more visual. If you stopped to just look, breathe, take it all in…

All of this played a huge part in giving me that much needed push. And I’m so glad for it.

We’ve all played some part in Riza’s scrapbook, so when I borrowed it from him, all he did was give me a big fat knowing grin! I never admitted it but he had been nagging me to write it out for a few years now, I guess there’s a time and place for everything.

Had I written this any time other than now, I would have written it from an entirely different perspective and I probably wouldn’t have valued it as much. Had I not gone through what I did, had I not learned what I learned this would have been a different story entirely.

This task, for me, was the best thing that I could have done for myself and as I flipped through the many colorful pages of this scrapbook, many treasured memories came to life in my mind once again.

I don’t remember ever imagining myself as an author, and even as I begin this “book”, I have this smug thought that I would finish it in no time at all, I mean after all, it’s all of our life stories how hard could it be because I know what had happened to all of us etc etc..

Little did I know what a mammoth task it would turn out to be….

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THREE YEARS LATER:

I lifted my head off my keyboard and moved my hand across my face. I had been drooling again. ” How could this take me three years?”, I asked myself again.

I got up and walked to my bed where Hana lay fast asleep. My beautiful little princess was growing up too quickly! She was already four years old, a total charmer and a non stop talker. Which I’m sure she inherited from me:-p
After planting a soft kiss on her cheek, I freshened up and sat at my desk once again.

I had rewritten Riza’s entire scrapbook, from everyone’s point of view, taking into account whatever they had thought mattered. My heart’s tireless pen wrote on and on, I had sat with each of them for many hours on many different days and each time that I had thought that this was the end, I’d be reminded of something else or something new would happen and I would simply have to include it.

Could there be an end since we were still alive?

Okay scrap that.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on something positive and there he was…

I was back at the beach , dangling my feet in the water alongside Zoheb. The look on his face, the feel of the wind gently caressing my skin, the feel of the cool water against my feet, the big deep blue infront of me…

“I wonder if it ever ends”, I said aloud, knowing full well that the earth is spherical in shape but the endless ocean always swallowed that bit of knowledge

“You can go around and around and you won’t find it”, he smiled, “some things don’t have to have a physical end, they just “are”, some things can’t be explained or understood they just have to be accepted”

“I didn’t quite ask for philosophy”, I moaned

“You are but a ship on the ocean of life Applepie, there will be high and low tides, there will be rip tides, there will be storms, sometimes you will end up shipwrecked..but if you want to go home, you have to fix that ship and head back out onto the ocean”, he said in a serious tone

I splashed him a little extra for that, annoyed that my simple question yielded such a long answer that was forcing me to think when I was tired!

But that was it!

Inspiration, definitely came in doses!

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A FEW DAYS LATER…

“I’m almost done”,I said happily

“Good for you sweetheart!”, Hana cheered

“Nemo has got to stop doing that”, I said as I shook my head

“Papa said don’t..”

“call him Nemo yes I know”, I grinned, “But papa is a Nemo and papa is an idiot!”

“Mummy bad word!”, she protested

Hana was Nemo’s chamchi (lol….sidekick) and wouldn’t hear anything remotely bad about him. And before she could start..I was saved in the nick of time, as Riza drove into our yard to fetch her.

“Bye baby girl”, I said, as she got into Riza’s car

Hana promptly ignored me and began complaining to Riza about me calling her papa a “bad word”.

It was so cute!

“Why do you do that Aara?”, Riza scowled playfully, “You can’t come to my house if you are going to use bad words”

My rascal smiled triumphantly as Riza continued to “scold” me.

“Papa is going to fetch Hana today, not Mummy!”, Riza said and Hana high fived him happily

I pouted, held my ears and apologized and Hana laughed with Riza.

As soon as they left, I darted back to my desk and began reading right from the beginning….