This too will pass

Not that i am much aware of the precepts of Sufism, but, from "The Way of the Sufi":

A powerful king, ruler of many domains, was in a position of such magnificence that wise men were his mere employees. And yet one day he felt himself confused and called the sages to him.

He said: 'I do not know the cause, but something impels me to seek a certain ring, one that will enable me to stabilize my state.

'I must have such a ring. And this ring must be one which, when I am unhappy, will make me joyful. At the same time, if I am happy and look upon it, I must be made sad.'

The wise men consulted one another, and threw themselves into deep contemplation, and finally they came to a decision as to the character of this ring which would suit their king.

The ring which they devised was one upon which was inscribed the legend:

This, too, will pass.

Before his sweat dries

i remember reading sometime back for the first time a reported saying attributed to Prophet Muhammad, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him. i don't remember the exact words, but the hadith is paraphrased as follows (it has been paraphrased by me so the following words are not exact as they should be): "Pay the labourer his wage before his sweat dries [from his brow]." According to another hadith, "One of the three persons that the Prophet (pbuh) will argue against on the Day of Judgement is a "man who engaged a labourer and enjoyed full benefit from him, yet did not pay him (his due) wages" [again, paraphrased].

This week, a 25 year old construction worker from India, Arumugam Venkatesan, hung himself from a ceiling fan in a house on the outskirts of Dubai, apparently because he was unable to pay back a high-interest loan he had taken in order to pay it to a company that arranged for him to relocate from India to Dubai. The company that brought him from India to Dubai had allegedly not paid his salary for months and, contrary to the UAE's laws, the company had taken his passport from him. Consequently not only were they, in effect, making him work for no wages whatsoever, but Venkatesan had no legal route for leaving the country had he even wished to return to India; the company kept illegal possession of his passport. Apparently a common practice.

Venkatesan is only one of the hundreds of thousands of construction workers who make the trek across the Arabian Sea from cities such as Dhaka, Colombo, Bombay, Karachi, Lahore. Some come by boat, some by plane. Many leave behind several dependents - hungry mouths they hope to feed through the foreign remittances they will send back home. In Venkatesan's case, according to the report, "he was the sole breadwinner in a family of six."

i tried to find some mention of this news in the English-language UAE newspapers, but have been unable to. However, the UAE-based Khaleej Times did manage to report yesterday that this year's Dubai Shopping Festival has been a massive hit, including with foreign tourists. $3 million and 220 pounds of gold are "up for grabs". Extremely reassuring to know.

strange...

...strange how, in the midst of feeling so many stormy emotions, an unasked-for act of kindness done by a 'semi'-stranger, may mean so much. Someone did that for me today, and it almost filled me with tears.

Forces me to take a deep breath at the end of my day and thank Allah for all the little blessings i have that i never take the time to appreciate.

Shake hands with the devil

Watched this Canadian documentary, "Shake hands with the devil - the failure of humanity in Rwanda" last night. It has won the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award at this year's Sundance Festival. The documentary follows retired Canadian forces general Romeo Dallaire as he returned to Rwanda ten years subsequent to serving as head of the United Nations peacekeeping forces. Dallaire was witness to the massacre of almost one million people during that country's civil war; he pleaded for the international 'community' to give him the authority and the resources - sufficient numbers of peacekeepers, for example - to prevent the massacres. The world, as it often does, looked away and 800,00 innocent people were macheted to death.

i can't get the look in Dallaire's eyes out of my mind. One may almost see, though not quite, what ghosts still haunt this individual. i hope he finds the peace he is seeking for, if not in this world, then in the next.