The First Deep Knowing

Everyone talks about their first job, their first car, their first love. These are important landmarks in the living of a full life. However, there is another first which does not receive its requisite attention. Our first spiritual experience – a deep knowing, a feeling of connection with something that is infinite and eternal. This first connection is life defining.

I am nine years old, living in Baghdad during the Iran Iraq war. My beloved grandmother is visiting us from India. My mother invites all the women and girls from the neighborhood to commemorate the Prophet’s birthday (Milad-Un-Nabi). About 50 women gather together to feast on my mother’s food. Afterwards, we settle down with steaming cups of tea to sing together. We sing Elahi’s/Naats in Arabic, Bangla and Urdu/Hindi. Hymns praising the Prophet (Peace and blessings upon him), his birth mother (PBUH), his milk mother (PBUH), his wife (PBUH) and his daughter (PBUH). Singing, remembering and embodying not just the noble attributes of the Prophet (PBUH) but also The Women. Strong, resilient women.

It is by remembering that we keep them alive in our hearts and our lives. The songs told their stories, which I knew. These women had captivated my mind and held my heart as their willing hostage since I first heard their stories at bedtime. Tell me again the story of Fatima (PBUH, the daughter of the Prophet), I would beg my grandmother as she tried to get me to sleep. It is said that Fatima would glow like a radiant sun, all different hues at different times of the day. Hearing this story, like a little moon, I too absorbed her light (Nur). Radiating love and peace, I would drift off to sleep.

At the Milad-Un-Nabi, the women and girls sing into the twilight. It is magnificent and moving. There is palpable magic, mystery and power in the beauty of these women – raised voices, bowed heads. Great reverence. They are calling the divine in, the air is thicker and warmer now. There is a presence of energy that is tangibly different than that of the women and girls, whom I know and love. There is a vibrational quality to this felt energy. I feel the humming sensation for days. As an absent minded, day dreaming child lost in her books, the adults notice no difference in my behavior. When the humming at last abates, it leaves a deep yearning in its wake. To the child that I was, it felt like a deep hunger, but not one satiated by food.

The women and girls, bodies and souls deeply nourished by the presence of the divine in each other and beyond the veil, bundle up and stumble out into the cold night. The memory of that day has stayed with me. When I lapse into forgetfulness, it bubbles up to the surface as a lasting reminder of my mortal yearning for connection with the eternal.

Azra Rahim M.D.