Cleansing in the Rain: the Final Purge

I was sitting on the grass. It was raining. Hard. It’s that time of year in Tampa when rain pours every single day. Each drop fell to heal a different wound. Wounds so deep I forgot they existed. Wounds that I owned. Wounds the earth owned. Stories merged into one great web: my stories and others’ stories. Salty and unsalty drops ran down my face. 

I was cleansing in the rain for the 50th time in two years. This cleanse, however, was different. It wasn’t sitting at rock bottom to find the beauty in pain. Nor was it searching for the great opportunities of growth like I usually do. It was heavier. A hurt that wasn’t stagnant. It felt like giant boulders were finally cracking and the water in the rocks were gushing out. 

Something (so small) had happened the day before that triggered and unleashed everything. I knew God was listening. I could feel Him. I could feel him closer than my jugular vein. It was the final purge; and it wouldn’t stop. 

The sky poured. I continued to sit. I continued to drain my insides. I continued to pray.  

A month earlier I had bumped into an Iraqi at a hotel breakfast in a different country. “We really are good people,” he said, his distant eyes locking into mine. “We used to see you all marching for us on TV. It gave us hope.” The word hope was dead as it rolled off his tongue. The same way he found his mother floating in a river with a bullet in her head.

We were from the same generation. Each witnessing the war from a different angle. He, in Baghdad. Me, in the United States. It could have been me watching him on TV in front of the White House calling for sanctions. We cut our trip short visiting my grandmother, one summer, and rushed back to Atlanta one day before the borders closed for the first Gulf War. My oldest sister was born in Baghdad after my parents fled the monstrous Assad regime in 1979. How many times did God save me from experiencing war? I could have been in Syria. I could have been in Iraq. But it wasn’t my destiny. Yesterday it was Bosnia. Today it’s Gaza. What will it be tomorrow?  

What was my destiny? What is my purpose? Who really is God? What does He expect of me? Why so much suffering? Here. There. Everywhere. The stories are billions. The pain is one. 

My destiny was here, in America. More specifically, it was two marriages. Two divorces. One long. One short. I now wear them like armor. Each barring scars that led me to growth. Strength. Honor. And Love. 

The first marriage was the vehicle for my offspring. To continue the torch of God’s Light and Guidance (inshaAllah) in five different directions. 

I will always cherish the memories of that marriage and the wonderful experiences that came with it. He was and is a very good man. My children are blessed to be ours. We are blessed to be theirs. 

My second encounter uprooted life as I knew it. A tornado for this exact moment: purging of the self. To understand opposites: strength and weakness; dark and light; truth and deceit; words and actions; pain and peace. The tools I need for 40 and beyond. Who he was or is has no significance. A character dropped in and plucked out. A relationship will end exactly as it began. With my first, it was slow and long, and for that, the closing was slow and long to find the peaceful forward flow. With the second, it was quick and began with a text; so it ended quickly. Also with a text. Just enough time to shatter a vessel so that God could give me all kinds of glue to recreate and build stronger.     

I continued to cry. Everything was gushing out. Moving. Deep within my tissues. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time. One must feel the pain. Never block or numb it. When you decide to not feel the hard feelings and experience the discomfort, you have also decided to not feel the good feelings of joy and peace and gratitude. Yacob, may God be pleased with him, had two emotions: extreme grief and extreme joy. We need both to understand each one. People have an addiction to numbing their emotions, causing chronic pain and physical illnesses. We need feelings to attach to God and have spirituality. If we don’t have spirituality, then we can’t have resilience. Without resilience, we can’t bring beauty to people.

For hours, the rain continued. Suddenly, it slowed. The drops turned softer, merciful. Each drop felt like a kiss on my skin. My muscles had melted. The sky turned blue. The kind rain continued. A perfect full-arched rainbow appeared. The Giver of Gifts was giving me a gift. This, I was sure. For God comes to you the way you see Him. It was the greatest validation. Each color representing something hopeful. For that, new tears came. Tears of gratitude. Tears of love. Tears of humility. “Thank you, Allah.” 

I held my heart to contain the overwhelming emotions the same way Hajar, may God be pleased with her, held the flow of zamzam to protect it for her son. I sat up. I breathed in, filling every space in my lungs. I held it for 10 seconds. Then slower than my inhale, released. I let it all go. 

There was God everywhere. His attributes were surrounding me. There was beauty in every pain. To suffer is to cleanse. Whether it’s here. There. Everywhere. In Sudan. In Afghanistan. In Syria. In our homes. In our minds. The goal is one: to kill the ego. To do that, you must kill a part of your self. To die before you die. Then do your role to make the world a healthier and honorable place, like Omar al-Mokhtar from Libya, Abdelkader al-Jazaeri, or Rabiah al-Adawiya. This is the only way to be purified and return Home, where Adam and Hawaa first began.    

With the rainbow slowly fading, I decided I would prepare for 40 even though it was 6-months away. We prepared for Ramadan 6-months before its arrival to truly benefit from its greatness. If what the sages say is true, that 40 is the beginning of wisdom, then it must also be true that it’s not the age that brings wisdom; but the preparation. Shouldn't we then prepare for 40 and the new journey ahead, entering it with a newfound self and space?

After a week, I collected my journals from the past years, especially the last five. Thousands of pages. I burned them one-by-one. I watched them majestically fade. Disappear. Gone. The space inside was clearing. I could feel the opening from al-Fatah. 

“One day Allah will personally come to you and lift the pain out of you,” my cousin once told me. 

I never believed him.

But he was right. It wasn’t the absence of pain he meant; rather, the hold of pain over one. I’ve always been a cheerful person; my greatest weakness was laughing too much. But beyond that, I held on to my stories. Stories that were too old to carry into my future.

They no longer existed, and I was free. 

هذا من فضل ربي