S6E1 Mother Died In Hajj – He Got Adopted – He Goes Back, To Find Her Grave.

Voyage of the humble soul, written by Dr. tk Harris and roomie Sophia.

Read by TK Harris. Rumi Sophia is a Nasheed writer and social commentator. He's traveled around the world documenting how people conquer hardship, war, poverty and disease, including Coronavirus play. He lives in South Africa. I myself, Dr. tk Harris, I'm a neuropsychologist and mental health expert. I focus my work on combining medicine, religion and spirituality.

Voyage of the humble soul is a story about a young man who goes on a journey of how much life changing journeys. They're very important to us, especially as Muslims.

If 1000 people told us about what changed when they went on Hajj, what would they say? We collected the wisdom of all of these stories, and here is the result. Thanks I owe to the hundreds of people who told us so many inspirational stories of conquering hardship and gave us faithful accounts of their journeys and how they grew spiritually. And as people. They shone a bright light for us. And this is our humble attempt to capture something of their amazing experiences

made the almighty bless us all.

The first chapter is called the call

Zedd

humble and beloved by all who knew him. He had a quiet zest about him that lit everything in his gaze and you.

Two dozen of his past years were raised in the city of a class.

He taken a walk through the watery dunes outside the city and climbed the hill that overlooked the coast and port.

It was where we found him standing on a breezy outcrop looking out to see

he scan the hazy horizon. blemished with tiny smudges of cruise liners and container ships. He was looking for a certain vessel.

The ship, the old mass, was going to be in the port of a class for one day and loading and restocking and he was going to be on board.

A butterfly entered his eyeline from the left. It's winged colors caught his focus, distracting him from hunting for his ship.

It buffed and Bumble the line in the breeze ebden Eddy this way and that correcting course with little bounces and jitters on its way to wherever it was quite clearly determined to go.

It's vivid stripes and dots of orange black and white will not come into the region. He was sure it was a monarch

must have been blown Of course in heavy continental winds. Or perhaps it was a stowaway hatched in among the many foreign flowers and crops traded and transiting through the port. It was bravely trying to make its way back home.

That's what he thought anyway.

Then he took to thinking he was going on a journey to find his roots,

a pilgrimage to a holy place, doubling his excitement. It was his place of second birth, as he called it. It was where he was adopted a wandering orphan of just for

nobody knew where he was originally born.

his heartbeat and ecstatic rhythm so loud, that he was certain it could be heard by all the city and all the creatures in the sea stretching out before him.

He saw a shape that could have been the mass, but it was still too far out.

Then he sat on the ground, look skyward and said a prayer without words. He caught his mood turning slightly gray.

He felt a heaviness in his soul. A kind of confused regret.

And then he said to himself

Why am I made of two hearts. One is eager to run and the other caught up in the place I'm about to leave.

I would be lying to claim that I leave a class without a scar on my soul.

I was once a little raft broke the dock for rescue and repair. transformed by care and loving hands into a sturdy boat.

My heart was painted warm in red and violet sunsets. I slept in moonlit nights of green and icy blue.

Can a man feel the hand of regret on his back? Even when he leaves a place at times he felt alone.

For so many years I ran. I fell and played here. My tears and sweat have dropped like tiny shards of glass onto the paved white paths all through this town.

My dreams wander the breeze inside and out of the cities boundaries. Lost like small children.

Maybe they're seeking a mother too, like I did all those years ago.

I can

No,

it feels like there's a living piece. A ghost of me who will remain here in shadow while I had east towards the darkening horizon tonight.

Yes, that's right. A part of me stays holding onto here in tender mood, hoping that I will return safely.

Zed stood up and checked his hands, greeted with impressions from being pressed into the shaylee ground.

I must hasten my departure. vast and holy places have called me to them, like they have done for all men since the time we walked on Earth. Now I must respond.

To remain would be to tangle with my own conflicted soul.

Which man has ever prevailed in a battle against the shadow of his own regret? No, I would lose even more of myself than I do standing on this hill. More than I could stand.

Why do I have such manic hope? To take this whole place with me?

to God,

I am but a word you spoke one day.

You said be and I was. And the word is forever in flight from the moment it is spoken.

It must follow its course through time and space, ignorant of its own echoes, like a bird navigating the night of a dark valleys and cliffs, hoping to return to nest.

After the time, he started to walk back down towards the city across the soft ground.

He looked out again and saw the mass more sharply casting its shape as it emerged from the distance heat.

Its aquiline profile belied its imposing sides. Beautifully appointed with five floors of cabins. birthing perhaps 1000 people in luxury.

He noticed the rows of lit windows and balconies across it side.

aboard. inside those tiny windows, he caught a few tiny shapes of the occupants. He imagined uniformed staff and wary travelers, all inhabitants of this ship, in turn, inhabitants of this planet traversing one of its blue expanses, each to their own duty or amusement.

He's fair was paid for without a blink by the affluent community he stayed with. In truth, although he was formally adopted by Sarah, he was everyone's son, and everyone's brother.

What their children got. He got it had always been this way, even well into his young adulthood today.

This was the first time anyone from the city was going to go back.

They first went to 24 years ago and hedge on the advice of a young priest called Binyamin.

They attend to faith in a desperate bid to change their cities fortune.

They were almost destitute, saving their last scraps of money to buy passage in the belly of the hum in a humid and slow old mineral ship.

There were only 30 of them back then.

It was a fateful year. In heavy rains on the pilgrimage, a massive mudslide envelop the tunnel with throngs of pilgrims walking, the panic, the crush, and the waves of choking mud claimed more than 40 lines.

None of the class camp were hurt, but they were in shock like everyone else.

And then this child came wandering into their camp, crying for his mother.

Sarah, a kind and sweet, unmarried daughter of the city took to comforting him while they searched for his family.

Two weeks after looking. No relatives had claimed the boy and no mother had been found.

She was presumed dead.

By then, his sturdy little frame is gentle eyes, and his shy character had moved all of their hearts a distance that they'd never traveled before.

It felt like assigned to them.

They decided to adopt him. The process was swift in their number. They were both a judge and a learned religious scribe and the authorities of the place embarrassed and coping with a disaster. We're only too glad to agree. One less mouth to feed.

This time round. It was going to be different.

The class had prospered. The money could afford to charter a whole floor of a comfortable cruise ship. 200 people in fact, including some recently married couples and

Many of the older souls who had gone on the original journey

said contemplated the people he was leaving behind. And the people who'd be traveling with people who knew all part of his family.

A greeting came bounding and tumbling out from within him as he wandered through the scrub and the grassy dunes. And he said, almost out loud.

Fellow pilgrims, brothers, sisters, and all who on this day will embark towards the holy springs and the Blackstone.

The day My mother died, darkness bled my heart to husk

two dozen years in folded in your custody. I owe you a debt of love, I will surely default in ever repaying.

You guilted me to live among you. And now rich and weighty is my heart. My blood is like a river of gold that floods the chambers.

This is my dream. But we are bathing in the light of the noon today.

Two dozen years and now we will depart again.

I will seek the grave my mother rests in the holy place where her life expired.

I beg of you Allah accept my fair.

If I would die while traveling.

I pray my hosts not to despair. How bittersweet the tears which fall from eyes that grieve the fallen pilgrim, or blesser death.

Like leaves fall to the ground at their appointed time, long since set.

I do not know when my time comes around. But I know it will not be delayed.

I entrust my soul and seek refuge in the comfort of God's cloak.

The class was a coastal city of both modern and ancient rooftops.

It could have passed for Durban, Casablanca, or Perth. Depending on which street one looked

much smaller than any of those cities, with perhaps just 20,000 people, but it was vigorous and growing.

It had first been established by ancient people as a trading town. for several decades EClass suffered stock decline and became a starving crumbling place.

First there were droughts. Then a civil war, which destroyed the mountain roads bridging over to other towns. Then foreign trawlers took advantage of the chaos

and stole all the fish stocks away.

The final blow was a viral plague, a virus which so many countries quarantine for many months, being a port EClass suffered very badly.

Many classes died, and the city's recovery seemed impossible.

Its fortunes changed when 25 years ago, both rains and fish returned.

After a good harvest, the townsfolk use the money to repair the roads and the port, favorable geography and a peaceful government saw the city rise back up in dignified, beautifully lit prosperity.

That was the same year dad first arrived a small child in the custody of the people of your class.

It all seemed to turn around after that first desperate journey.

Ever since they return, it seemed their prayers were abundantly answered.

Although it would have been strange to say it out loud. They believed Zed but dumb luck.

adopting this last child they felt was the decision that please Allah bless them with rains harvest and prosperity ever since. As he reached the wet tunes at the base of the hill. Zedd saw the four towers of glassy dark stone that marked the gates to the port. They were at once beautiful and fearsome.

From their tips 1000 feet high to their square black basis, where they met the white stone of the square where people gathered. They were inscribed in gold with holy verses.

They were tall enough to be seen from 30 miles out stunning prongs of beautiful calligraphy, heavily accented and ornate.

They were dressed to inspire and impress arriving ships and remind those leaving of the city's prosperity

said behold the full sight as much as his eyes could drink.

He said to himself,

it is said to truly know oneself, one has to take a journey.

Do I look at the scene as leaving folk or as meeting them

Does this time mark an end? Or will it be sewn into my heart as where I really began.

I have both guilt and the gift of the war inside for every person in this place. All of them nurtured me, looked after me. And here they come to see me off again.

The men who interrupt their work, toiling in their factories, their offices and fields, the women taking turns suspending sales of tools and foods at the market, who come to bid me farewell.

My heart is full with such weighty gratitude. My soul is overflowing like a deep blue well. It's turbulent and bubbling waters, brim with inspirations, hope, and a wish for contentment.

If I could fill these people up with even half of what they gave to me,

I feel such great desire to give them what I seek myself.

But alas, a prayer is all the wealth that we can truly give.

And when I reach where I am going, I hope my prayers are worthy, asking for relief and mercy for those 30 souls who shed the burden raising me.

And I'll pray to Allah for favoring their destiny.

My lowly prayer is the finest offer I can make. I am no instrument of God, and I'm no prophet. They left us many years ago.

The voice of the prophets was the final time that God spoke to us. The last of them was like a final hand to study our souls.

Like helping infants who stand who would fall if you left them alone, or setting butterflies and bees to steady flight in the breezy trees.

In silence after prayers, I've stumbled on occasional stones of wisdom. And I've treasured them, because surely they were sent from God Himself.

Yet I have doubts. How do I know the true value of what I've gathered in my heart?

I can't account the value of my virtue versus sin. That is for God to do.

Perhaps these journeys are like lights for us to see within ourselves more brightly.

But troubling thoughts of guilt 40 owed the people of the town

and 40 felt regarding his childhood, returned to play dead.

And he thought again,

did I toil enough when sowing seeds in farmer's fields sufficiently to have a right to share their harvest?

I can't have done enough. And yet they say I owe them nothing.

It's difficult for sons to keep account when their father's favours aren't recorded.

Honestly, I pray not to return with empty hands. Perhaps in standing praying for them, I stand a chance of paying them back.

of his many hazy thoughts. These were the few that managed to find the discipline of words.

The kindness minds are so often troubled with busy states like these. So much of what Zed felt was wordless, pressed into his feelings like a crumpled note, whose ink and language were faded, scribbles illegible, but undoubtedly sad.

He felt there was some secret he had that he couldn't get find, even within himself.

That night, his bags were packed, and he got out of the taxi that delivered him to the port.

taking his first steps as a pilgrim with trembling uncertainty.

He saw other people in twos and threes, a classy men and women, some getting out of their own vehicles, and others getting out from the recently completed monorail. All of them walking excitedly towards the square.

The noise and sight was the signature of all such places,

echoing announcements mixed with the drone of vehicles, the horns of ships, and the chattering of workers, porters, relatives and soldiers. All in this haphazard mix.

The evening car was intoxicating.

The weight of everything in his life seemed to hide from what he was about to do.

As he walked, his stride grew heavier. his backpack tugged on him, and he felt disjointed.

His heart fluttered like the pain and frantic wingbeat of the butterfly on the hill.

The sky turned black and he fell.

He fainted from heat, excitement who

knows what.

Oh from that something yet unnamed

End of Chapter