The Nearest Heaven ✔️

Part 45 - Love

Part 45 – Love

"I was nourished by her love."

Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) talking about the love of his life Khadija (RA).

~Sahih Bukhari

Fadiyah heard Faraaz muttering to himself as he sat studiously on their new dining room table. With a roll of her eyes, she turned the stove off, shoved the dish cloth on the counter and walked out of the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" she asked as she came up behind him and placed her small hands on his now large shoulders.

Faraaz immediately lifted one of his hands and curled his fingers over her hand as he spun around and hugged her. "Uhm," he smiled awkwardly as his cheeks tinted red.

Fadiyah's curiosity grew at his hesitance to tell her. "Is it bad news?"

His nose crinkled as he denied it. "No, love, not bad news..." he took a deep breath. "It is just something embarrassing, at least for me it is."

Fadiyah nodded. "Oh, because you were moodily moping over it, quite loudly and it worried me," she teased him. "I could hear you all the way in the kitchen."

Faraaz pushed his chair back and made Fadiyah sit on his lap as he showed her the paper. He waited silently for her to read it as he hands encircled her waist and his fingers splayed across her belly.

Over the last few months, with less external stress, Fadiyah had been gaining weight. Her figure had been filling out and she began to look more womanly and less like an undernourished child.

"I am grateful for the fact that I have my Imaan intact," Faraaz began. "I am grateful to be alive and walking, mobile, eating on my own. I am grateful that I am no longer a burden to my family and my wife. I am grateful that I have a beautiful, loving, endearing and caring wife. I am grateful for my wife being someone who cares about me, for being someone who did not let society dictate to her what to do. I am grateful that my Fadiyah married me, because without her I would have been lost. I am grateful that Fadiyah has patched things up with her Nani and Zunairah. I am grateful that Fadiyah's Nani gave me the blessing to marry my Fadiyah. I am grateful that my father lives with us. I am grateful that my wife insisted on my father living with us. I am grateful to have met Aaban. I am grateful that Aaban brought Fadiyah to my home. I am grateful that Aaban's father has allowed us to meet Aaban and his siblings. I am grateful that I get too live as a Muslim. I am grateful for just being here."

As he spoke, Faraaz ran his hands all over Fadiyah's arms and waist. The hypnotic feeling of Fadiyah in his arms remained his constant reminder that he was alive, that he was loved and that Fadiyah was his, until they meet in Jannah again.

"This, Basimah, is my physical reminder of the things that I have been compiling mentally. Prior to my accident, I didn't know just how good my life was. I didn't realise that all my luxurious wants were not even things that the unfortunate could dream about." He shook his head in disgust, hating the awful young man that he was, but he was grateful for who he became. The past was not his defining character, it was only a mould for who he was about to be.

"Your past no longer defines who you are today," Fadiyah reminded him gently as she threaded her fingers through his hair. Her fingers pulled and tickled his curly little brown locks on his head. The silky strands merely flowed as if Fadiyah were playing with sand.

"My past is my reminder to do better, love. To be a better man for my wife, to be a better son to my father," he said sadly, but she saw the resolve in his eyes. "I am ashamed of who I was, love, but not of who I became. Thank you for being here for me, from the start up until now."