Guilted: Wars Against The Past (Editing)

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

Praise be to Allah for this, for everything, and for making me live a dream I've always watched silently, from afar.

Writing this book was a challenge for me, for I cannot bring myself to believe that I could literally see, read out my life in bits, my heart in words, my mind in order and my soul being acknowledged. It was mind-blowing, thrilling, tiring and heartbreakingly emotional, something like never before.

Again, Alhamdulillah, a million times over!

Guilted, this story comes out very brief yet deep with, as the characters' raw emotions are discovered and explored. Throughout the book, as you can see, I've only highlighted the main scenarios and the culminated points and turns. As it was my first ever time in writing an actual book/novel like story, I'm aware of my grammatical, punctual, structural and weirded errors. But it was one great of an experience, something I'll forever thank Allah for it.

I'm aware of the various, plentiful, unrelated ahadeeth, quotes and sayings before each chapters for each chapter, the only reason I've put them there, is to give you a little general knowledge, an off topic relief, and a little guide and most of them are my favourites, as I try my best to live by them.

I'm aware of the fact that the main protagonists, Abed and Sahar had encounters before marriage which were completely haraam or discouraged from the Islamic perspective, like few other situations throughout the book, but then again, my characters aren't angels nor they are perfectly flawless. I'm also aware of the fact that there were scenes which hinted off unrealistically, but after all this is a complete work of fiction. Nonetheless, I tried my best to write with realistic factors for instance, divorce, dealing with Riba, excessive wealth, overrated reputation, adultery, alcohol drinking, emotional wreckage, poor parenting, rapes, murders, domestic violence, deaths and etcetera, are all real and they are something many people go through all over the world and the contents which I have put in the story, is completely imagined/fictional.

About the epilogue, I know that it's a bit longer than usual, but then again, since I had the freedom to design the chapter as I wanted, I gave it a go. Yes, my apologies for the cringy scene (when Alya was suffering with her monthly encounter) at the beginning of Epilogue. The reason I thoroughly described that very scene is because I know most of the pre-teens or teenagers (females) would relate to it. It's something biologically normal or natural, something that's not meant to be ashamed about, or to be hated. Note that!

The graduation speech wasn't a very ideal one, but I wanted to twist it up as I couldn't do that in my own graduation. Writing the speech was very hard and nostalgic for me as almost all of the lines were from my graduation speech.

I came across wattpad when I was around 14 years-old. Then, I used to be the one who hated words, books or similar matters related. But wattpad proved me wrong, the world proved me wrong. Because I never imagined that there could exist souls whose depth could inspire my own mysterious, lost and unacknowledged depth. I never imagined for the life of me that I could hold their hearts in my hands, relating to them, healing and filling them by sending prayers.

And those very souls were of the few specific, unique and beautiful writers across wattpad!

I was a silent reader then, I barely knew what words were and barely knew the value of reading, I barely knew how things in wattpad actually worked. But I kept up with wattpad's flow, it took me to many paths of many hearts' doorsteps. Some which I have entered in and have bid my goodbyes with a heavy, nostalgic heart and some, which I have refused to leave.

I kept coming across hundreds of books, and honestly, most of them which I perceived them what was called cliché or overrated! Because every time I read a scene from a book with a clichéd plot, I always found myself to keep my phone down and pause, imagining my own plot, something I haven't come across.