SubhanAllah! Miles away, on the other side of the globe.
I often look at this drawing which is love, laid down in graphite. It is a rough drawing done by my mother for me that too after undergoing a major surgery of her right hand.
This drawing is more than just pencil on paper.
I can feel my mother’s tenderness in every dot. Especially, in the way the mother bird feeds her baby, so gentle, so intentional. It’s not just a sketch. It’s her heart, stretched across the page. And the fact that she drew this with a hand that’s been through major surgery, that turns this image into something sacred for me.
The mother bird is not just there, she is steady, focused, nourishing her baby like it’s her prime responsibility.
That’s my mother, my maa. Even when she herself is in pain, even when healing feels tough for her, she still finds a way to nurture us. Without asking for recognition. Without needing applause. Just love, pure and fierce. Even when she has nothing to feed she didn’t let my throat dry, she fed me her tears.
I also look at the tree. The tangled limbs, the bare spots, the delicate twigs that stretch out anyway. That’s what my mother taught me symbolically, even through this drawing, that life is like this imperfect but still growing.
SubhanAllah! her hand has been through so much that she can’t even write properly now after the surgery, and still, she tried this. She didn’t give up on creating something beautiful. That’s not just art, that’s more than that! She turned her emotions into something beautiful because that’s who she is.
Even broken, she chooses to build.
SubhanAllah! About the little bird in the nest?
My mummy told me, that’s me.
Reaching up.
A subtle way of tarbiyyah, not just in feeding, but in feeling!
In learning how to hope. How to stretch. How to rise. But not just with strength,
with softness. Even with sorrow.
She’s been teaching me, silently, painfully, how to own those tears.
Not hide them. Not resent them.But to let them live in me like rivers that shaped the land I stand on.
Because her tears weren’t weakness.They were legacy.
She fed me her grief when joy ran dry.
She soaked my roots in sadness as well so I could grow something deeper than surface smiles, I could grow soul. I could read people not just with their minds but with their hearts!
So now, when I cry, I don’t wipe it away like shame.
I hold it like memory.
Because I know where I got it from.
From a woman who turned tears into ink, into prayers, into art, into pen.
She taught me that real strength isn’t about hiding the hurt,
it’s about owning it.
Letting it water you.
Letting it soften you without breaking you.
Letting it teach you lessons.
Letting it become part of your existence, not an interruption to it.
Because some of the most beautiful things are grown in the soil of sorrow in order to provide serenity to the suffering world around!
Alhamdulillah! My mom still feeds my soul, through words, gestures, and beautiful roses (which she sends me on my whatsapp). She gives and gives even miles apart!
This drawing might not be entirely finished.
But maybe, it doesn’t need to be. Because sometimes, unfinished art is an ocean of
symbolism of unsaid words.
It’s a memory. A message.
A monument to quiet strength, and unconditional love.
SubhanAllah! This is tarbiyyah.
The kind that doesn’t just provide, but raises, nourishes.
The kind that shapes souls with mercy and pain and patience, all at once.
………..And it all takes me to The Ultimate Source of such an immense blessing, our Rabb-Allah.
Alhamdulillah.
رَّبِّ ٱرْحَمْهُمَا كَمَا رَبَّيَانِى صَغِيرًۭا
“My Rabb! Be merciful to them as they raised me when I was young.”
Ameen ya Al-Mujeeb.