The Writer

Although a reader and a writer are essential to each other’s existence, there is a distance of centuries between their sorrows and their joys. All the situations, feelings, sentiments, actions, nights, and days that are nothing but routine for everyone else keep the writer in a state of continual suffering. Until he has succeeded in transferring his entire inner turmoil onto paper in the form of characters, stories, dialogue, and a whole new world built entirely of letters and words, he cannot rest or breathe comfortably. Only then do to the convulsions in his mind and heart find rest.

There is also a world of difference between those who write and those who are written about. Of the second group, there are those who were worth writing about and those who wish to be written about. The latter spend money to buy glamorous outfits of ink to cover the nakedness of their personalities. They fail to realize that ink is a bright element that further brightens the ideas it depicts. Just like the blackness of the blackboard is further accentuated by the white chalk.

Then there are also those who have been exiled, murdered, and erased for their writing, and those who had the Pharaoh-like arrogance of having erased the ones who were written about, and those who were not willing to give credence to the ones who were written about.

There are also some fortunate ones who are frail of the strength yet who, with their ink of thankfulness, pen such words upon the blank paper of fate that every leaf and every grain of dust in nature smiles at the correlation of the writer with the text of his written word.

The writer reveals with his pen all the hidden ills of the society and thereby takes the entire blame of those ills upon his own head. He creates a body with his words. The eyes to view this body belong to the reader who is either free to give it so high a heat of love as to burn it to ashes or to turn it God-like and sink themselves for ever in its reverence.

The art of writing is not always inborn; it is often also learned. Those who write first and read later, write well. Those who read first and write later, write masterfully. For the discerning eye, words are spread everywhere. There are words that are clearly evident as well as those that are concealed. When those with the fate of kings written upon their brow lament their luck, they are indeed a sorrowful sight.

Some people write stories while it is the stories that write some people. It is absolutely impossible to paraphrase love for it is love that defines a person. It is unfathomable how one could claim to love someone for the sake of Allah (swt). I have never even been able to love Allah (swt) for the sake of Allah (swt).

There is no expiration date on the words that are written as supplications. Just like a word of goodwill that may a child learn to walk, run, read and write remains in effect for life, similarly, a written word always remains an evidence of its own existence for centuries to come.

And then there comes a time that writers become weary of the written word. They become apprehensive of knowledge and lose sensibility. And this is the point at which the journey of enlightenment begins.