S.K. Ali

Love from Mecca to Medina

fc ♡

I wonder if people even know where the word “mecca” actually, originally came from. It came from Mecca with a capital M, the place in the Middle East where people have been gathering for thousands of years to visit the first site of worship in the world still standing (according to Muslim people).

Adam sat up and leaned to the side and caught Zayneb’s eyes from over Hanna’s shoulder. 

They smiled at each other, a secret dancing in their eyes. 

There was no significant news coverage. She wasn’t even named. And I just know she would have been if she’d been a white woman who’d been bombed from the sky. That sounds horrible. But why does it seem to sound less horrible when it’s brown or Black people who get killed like that?

 As one of my favorite writers, Teju Cole, put it, Daadi was an “unmournable” body. 

As I put it, I don’t think anyone should be okay thinking some lives are not worth fighting for, that brown and Black people dying don’t count as much

For flowers, I said I was a Venus flytrap, always ready to bite anyone who needed to be put into place. 

Adam said he was a succulent, if those were allowed to be called flowers, because he didn’t need that much attention and liked being in the background.

Almost every day I had to tell myself that I was worthy. Of being loved, respected, and living a beautiful life.

 Because deep down in that mushy space inside me, maybe because of years of being seen as unwanted by the world outside my home, I didn’t believe it.

 Which is ironic for someone who wanted to fight for the worth of others

with hardship comes ease, as promised in the deen. 

AND SEEK HELP THROUGH PATIENCE AND PRAYER 

 CALL UPON ME AND I WILL ANSWER and WHOEVER DOES AN ATOM’S WEIGHT OF GOOD WILL SEE IT

 IF THE DAY OF JUDGMENT ERUPTS WHILE YOU ARE PLANTING A SAPLING, CARRY ON AND PLANT IT

Adam let me be silent. For a long time. He didn’t say  Zayneb? Zay-by?  his nickname for me, which was a play on “baby.” 

There is only a story that begins anew each day.

And the earth—We have spread it out wide, and placed on it mountains firm, and caused [life] of every kind to grow on it in a balanced manner, and provided thereon means of livelihood for you as well as for all [living beings] whose sustenance does not depend on you. 

Love from Mecca to Medina quotes

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