Fire (I) : Burning for Love

SFS
Jun 15
10 min read

اشتدي ازمه تنفرجي قد آذن ليلك بالبلج

وظلام الليل له سرج حتى يغشاه أبو السرج

Get worse, o trouble, so that you may be lifted

For your night has announced the breaking of the dawn

And even the darkness of the night has its gleams

until the father of these gleams overwhelms them

Qasidah al-Munfarijah, Ibn al-Nahwi

Earlier this year, I gathered with a small group of women to mark the Isra wa-l Mi'raj, in honour of the sacred seasonal cycle bringing us to the month of Rajab. We shared in this circle some of the striking stories and lessons transmitted from a night which is an ultimate testament to the station of the beloved of God ﷺ; the one who draws nearer than any other created being; whose 'sight never wandered', whose 'heart never doubted', who transcends the furthest boundary until there is no sepearation, and then returns to us to complete the circle of Love: an invitation for us to partake therein.

I shared in this gathering a narration I first heard about fifteen years ago, around 2010, whilst attending a day session on the lives of the four blessed paradisal women. Although each of their stories bore powerful openings to many points of reflection and action, it was a by-story mentioned in passing which stayed with me most potently, and often came to me over the years as an amalgamation of difficult images and unprocessed feelings. The images struck me as incomprehensible at the time, yet also unforgettable: they were images of fire, fragrance and feminine strength all intertwined in a lesson about love that transcends. It was the story of a servant attendant, one who combed the hair of the daughter of a pharaoh, and its narration was as follows:

It was narrated that Ibn ‘Abbaas (may Allah be pleased with him) said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said:

“On the night on which I was taken on the Night Journey (Isra’), a beautiful fragrance came to me. I said: O Jibreel, what is this beautiful fragrance? He said: This is the fragrance of the hairdresser of Pharaoh’s daughter and her children. I said: What is their story?

He said: Whilst she was combing the hair of Pharaoh’s daughter one day, the iron comb fell from her hand and she said, ‘Bismillah (in the name of Allah).’ The daughter of Pharaoh said: ‘My father?’ She said: ‘No. My Lord and the Lord of your father is Allah.’ She said: ‘Shall I tell him about that.’ She said: ‘Yes.’ So she told him and he summoned her and said: ‘O so and so, do you have a Lord other than me?’ She said: ‘Yes, my Lord and your Lord is Allah.’ He ordered that a baqarah (lit. “cow”) made of copper be heated up, then he ordered that she and her children be thrown into it.

She said: ‘I have a request to make of you.’ He said: ‘What is your request?’ She said: ‘I would like my bones and my children’s bones to be gathered together in one cloth and buried.’ He said: ‘This will be done for you.’ He ordered that her children be thrown into it in front of her, one by one, until they came to the last one who was an infant boy who was still being breastfed. It was as if she wavered because of him, but he said: ‘O mother, go ahead, for the punishment of this world is easier to bear than the punishment of the hereafter.’ So she went ahead.”

Ibn ‘Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) said: 'Four infants spoke: ‘Eesa ibn Maryam (peace be upon him), the companion of Jurayj, the witness of Yusuf and the son of the hairdresser of Pharaoh’s daughter.'

Narrated by Imam Ahmad in al-Musnad, Hadith Hasan.

The love of a mother for her children is so oft-cited, and so well-experienced, that it often serves as a pinnacular example of the human capacity to love - love and mercy so expansive, so giving and so unwanting, that only it seems to offer a metaphorical gimpse of the love that the Creator bears for creation. Its expansiveness appears to be the greatest limit of the human experience, yet it is just a flicker; a single portion of the mercies with which our Rabb - exalted beyond all description - sustains all of creation. We hear of it many times in anecdotal tales, in a range of lessons, and in spiritual literature, starting with Prophetic narrations which reminds us of women's innate compassion, mercy and love - and of what is still greater than that:

'Umar b. Khattab reported that there were brought some prisoners to RasulAllah ﷺ amongst whom there was also a woman, who was searching (for someone) and when she found a child amongst the prisoners, she took hold of it, pressed it against her chest and provided it suck. Thereupon RasulAllah ﷺ said: Do you think this woman would ever afford to throw her child in the fire? We said: By Allah, so far as it lies in her power, she would never throw the child in fire. ' Thereupon RasulAllah ﷺ said: Allah is more kind to His servants than this woman is to her child.

Narrated in Sahih Muslim

What then does it take for a woman to hear that her children are to be thrown into fire, and not scream out? What does it take for her to submit to this; to not do whatever she can to stop it? What does it take for a woman to watch her children be thrown into fire in front of her - each one, one by one - yet to not relent to the demands of the opressor ?

In our gathering, some women - mothers - were silent. Some others - also mothers - suggested, much like the utterance of the infant in the narration, that when burning in fire is better than the state those beloved are currently in, then love for them, and wanting better for them, means withstanding the pain of a transition to something better. Yet, it means, nonetheless, the witnessing of their, albeit temporary, annihilation. Burning in fire is a particular kind of destruction leaving no trace - no human form - merely indistinguishable ash. For me, witnessing the annihilation of that which is most beloved is still a feat unsurmountable without the posession of something quite transcendent - something that takes one beyond. To bear torturous pain such as this - beyond that which description can encompass - and stand firm in its experience, is only possible for the one who carries a love far greater than that which seems most natural, befitting and reflective of the feminine principle - that expansively merciful, endlessly nurturing, fiercely protective love for one's children.

It seems to me increasingly that these images of fire, fragrance and feminine strength, which have been swirling unprocessed in my mind, are altogether indicative of the heart's capacity to be given over to the greatest love. A love that transcends all others; a love that can move beyond the most natural responses of the human experience; a love that can transform feminine fragility to feminine strength; a love that still fills the universe with radiating fragrance aeons after a single moment which bore testament to it.

Recently, in re-reading Mawlana Rumi's Masnavi-e-Ma'navi, I was reminded once again of this amalgamation of fire, fragrance and feminine strength; of love transcendent. Mawlana relates the tale of a Jewish King who tried to destroy the religion of Prophet Isa, upon him be peace. His narration makes mention of the 'people who made fire pits', seemingly a reference to those mentioned in Surah al-Burooj (The Constellations). Although I have engaged with Masnavi frequently in intensive episodes over the past two decades, I never seemed to note this particular narration found early in Book One. One day, soon after the gathering of the Night Journey, it unexpectedly came to my attention, mingling with the difficult images of fire and love I have been carrying. It reads as follows:

This Jew then bought a woman with her child

Before the idol while the flames grew wild,

Then grabbed her child and quickly threw it in

So she, in fear, would swap her faith for sin:

He wanted her now to bow down her head,

But then her child cried, 'Stop, for I'm not dead!

I haven't died, I'm happy, join me here!

It only looks like fire, so have no fear!

The fire just blinds you to what's really there:

God's mercy which has come out of thin air:

Enter, and witness living proof of God,

The joy which makes His own elite applaud,

Come and see water that's like fire, it's true,

A world of fire which seems like water too!

And Abraham's well-hidden mysteries:

Here he found jasmine and tall cypress trees.

When you gave birth to me I saw my tomb -

How much I feared I'd fall down from your womb!

Once born I fled the confines of that cage

To fresh air and a bigger, brighter stage.

But now that world seems like a womb to me

For in this fire I've found serenity:

A world that's dead in form, but lives in essence,

While that world lives in form, the relam of transcience.

Enter, for every mother has the right,

You'll see it has no flames though it shines bright!

You've seen the might of tyrants who are base,

Now come and see the power of God's grace!

His mercy is what makes me now implore,

Since drowned in joy I think of you no more;

Come in believers! Our pure faith apart,

All other things bring torment to the heart -

The child's repeated shouting was so loud

Amazement filled the souls of all the crowd,

So, selflessly, each one of them in turn

Jumped in believing that they wouldn't burn:

They dived through love, they didn't drag their feet,

All for the One who makes the bitter sweet.

That Jew turned red for he now felt ashamed,

Regret had left his bitter heart inflamed

Because he saw the people's faith increase-

Through self annihilation they'd found peace.

What he'd rubbed on the faces of that crowd

Now covered his own face just like a cloud,

That one who tore the shirts that we all wore,

Saw his own ripped, ours perfect as before.

The images here are somewhat incredulous. Both child and mother, seeming to whirl in mystic audition with shouts of joy, call all the people into the fire, who in turn, 'dived through love', resulting in the whole crowd burning, seemingly joyful. What is striking is that the mother and child make up the primary opening to burning in this tale. The mother and the child represent the utmost extent to which the human imagination can stretch in conceiving love which sacrifces without question and which is devoted entirely to the beloved without any ounce of care for oneself. It is this image, that of the mother's love, which we are tasked with conceiving as being taken over by love entirely transcendent; love for 'the One who makes the bitter sweet'. A spiritual commentary on this tale draws attention to the impact of such a shahadah. There is an imprint made upon all of creation through its witnessing of a human heart given over to entirely transcendent love supreme: as if this love overpowers all else with a force unsurmountable; a seemingly silent, soft, serene weapon; a tirgger of nucelar force which topples over all resistence:

"The Padishah got himself into the most shameful situation, and the cruelty he'd wrought upon the people brought them felicity. For the people were even more bound to love of God and the fire of divine beauty than they had been before. The Padishah himself fell into the well he had dug. That is how it is, if someone breaks the heart of the people and oppresses them, in the end his lot will be to burn in the fire of their sighs."

***

Symbolic image of Ward Khalil in the fire which killed her mother and siblings, Gaza 2025.

This imagery of fire, fragrance, feminine strength and a love transcendent, has for several months been mingling in my mind with images upon our screens of engulfing fire, charred bodies and inconceivable pain engraved deep on the faces of mothers. The strength of their sighs as if pierce the screen, over and over again, incessant in their frequency, demaning an unforgettable witnessing. Avert your eyes, perhaps, but to avert one's heart requires several layers of pretence, for the enduring imprint is already made upon the universe, already mingled with the atmospheric particles which bore witness to each moment. I can not but see in the horrors telecast from Gaza a continuum of the realities found in Mawlana's narration; in the narrations of fragrances witnessed on the Night Journey; in the the poem of prayer and advice from 11th century Morocco which draws attention to 'arajun muhyi abada': a sweet-smelling fragrance forever alive - or life-giving - coming from the depths of darkness.

I thought of this continuum whilst reading of the Palestinian paedratician, Dr. Aala al-Najjar on duty at hospital, whilst her home was bombed and engulfed in fire, killing 9 out of her 10 children - their bodies burnt entirely, charred beyond any recognition. The one surviving child in critical care, and her husband who had likewise been burnt, later also transitioned to the eternal abode. This woman who left her own children at home in the midst of war, to loyally and lovingly tend to other children, brought once again to my mind the capacity of the human heart to give over to a love that transcends any sense of 'own'; the capacity to love which moves far beyond the boundaries to which the human imagination for love extends, and yet is also intimately present in tangible, sensorial, human experience. That which is transcendent is equally that which is most intimately known.

Hearts given over to love suchlike can not but bear through unimaginable torture to arrive at the 'gleams' - surjun - emitting the kind of fragrances which radiate through the skies for all of time. And I can not but see the station of this woman - as well as that of the woman who travels to collect in her headscarf the bone fragments of a child she could not bury in the midst of bombing, and that of the woman who receives the headless corpse of her newborn breastfed just minutes prior, and the station of countless others whose stories we will never hear - a continuum of realities. They are examples of withstanding, and standing firm in witnessing, the annihilation of all other than the love supreme; the love transcendent. Their station is that of the swirling of mystic audition in fire relayed by Mawlana, and the station of the unnamed servant woman whose fragrance fills the heavens, wafting to the beloved Rasul ﷺ on his Night Journey. Fire, feminine strength and its lasting fragrance; lessons in giving over to the greatest love.

وفوائد مولانا جُمَلٌ لشروج الأنفس والمُهجِ

ولها أرج محي أبداً فاقصد محيا ذاك الأرَجِ

The blessings of our Lord are many

so your soul and heart’s blood can roam free

And they (the blessings) have a life-giving scent

so go to the source of that scent

Qasidah al-Munfarijiyyah, Ibn al-Nahwi