Yasir Fuad – February 16, 2020
^{Edited by Rabhia Shuja}

Imagine when you die, you get the opportunity to listen to five prayers a day, offered by five different people in which they prayed for you and reconciled with those moments from your life that made a positive impact on their lives.

The story begins as a stenographer wakes up to his first day, in the afterlife or the beginning of eternity. He tries to figure out the new form of life, without his body. Now left just with his soul, he experiences a whole new continuum of time, space, and consciousness. He always thought that the dying process ends a man’s quest to find the meaning of life, by stripping off the anxieties and confusions of materialistic life. But little did he know, that in the absence of all worldly distractions, the only wish left would be a descriptive diagnosis of the life that he had just lived. It felt just like finishing a movie on a projector and coming back to reality after being caught up in the character’s life, still trying to understand the broader meaning of the movie. These thoughts were interrupted by a sound, he could hear a person praying to God for his forgiveness and peace in the afterlife. It was followed by a memory of him with the person who was praying. 

For the first time he could see the importance of little acts of kindness he had done in his life. Towards his last days on earth, he was so confused; what was the purpose of his life as he was unable to become famous, rich, powerful enough to influence people or to make an impact in their lives. He could not invent something big, could not become a prominent figure over the course of history. Instead on earth, he couldn’t even get his sleep, until he had finished fighting the haunting thoughts of mistakes he had made. 

Only now, when he was experiencing these prayers and the explanatory memories in a set of five everyday, from the people to whom he had given a chunk of his time, money, knowledge or even a smile to ease their pain. The meaning and purpose of his life was finally being unfolded after him. This kept going on until there was not a bit of anxiety or confusion left in him. Serenity and bliss had replaced it. The last day felt more like a convocation day, which ended with a Divine Voice:

“Behold! Verily no fear shall be upon the friends of Allah, nor shall they grieve”

Though he tried to follow the path of righteous people in life. It was the moment he understood the depth of the word God. He could absorb the holistic meaning of each and every word. All of this diagnosis or prognosis of his life on earth was an incredible experience, which felt even more real than life. He came at peace with the life he had led, no regrets of the past, no fears ahead. Only one last question left unanswered in his mind.

“Is this the heaven I was promised for?”