Its cooler than you expect. But it’s a creeping cold you don’t immediately register. It’s as if the oasis wants to acclimatise you to itself. A cool warmth, if you would. The taxi drivers here haggle, which is endearing. In Mecca, they simply let you walk away.
Journeying into the city for the first time, you might expect a more commercialised metropolis. The economic activity generated by year-round religious tourism combined with the modernising ethos of an oil-rich gulf creates an assumption of a city consumed by glass and concrete. You can be forgiven for not doing your research either, for the concerns that bring one here are indifferent to the material structure and economy of the place. Steeped in religious veneration, the subject of a million love poems, of longing and desire of a billion hearts, of innumerable lifetimes; Madinah allows little thought for what it will hold beyond the haram itself. As you move inwards, the proliferation of malls, tall, hideous structures, urban complexes dominated by gas oil and gas offices; none of it quite arrives. What emerges is something fittingly unworldly; uncommercialised, ungentrified, unfazed, uninterested. Madinah stands in the midst of the modern gulf as an island of its own kind, austere and ascetic. Its character is like that of its king - prophetic.
khusravi achi lagi
na sarwari achi lagi
hum fakeeroon ko medina ki gali achi lagi
Prior to the journey, you may ask if you are spiritually ready to visit the Prophet (PBUH). As Uhud arrives, you wonder if you are even ready to face the mountain he professed to love, the mountain which loved him back.
I reached my accommodation in the early hours of the morning, slightly unsettled. The apartment was three kilometres from the haram, in the midst of inner-city Medina. I was in fact closer to Syedna Hamza than to the Prophet (PBUH) himself. It was not shabby, but certainly a step down from the Hilton I had just come from in Muscat. The language barrier was also disconcerting, but something serene hung in the air. One morning, I could not find a taxi from outside the accommodation at Fajr. As I walked along the deserted streets towards the haram, away from where outsiders ventured, the heart assumed no fear. Dark faces emerged from the narrow, sloping streets and unpaved alleys joining the road. The temperature fell below 10 degrees and was made cooler yet by the sharp wind. The mind refused to be circumspect however, instead dimly recalling the poet’s words;
kahan mai kahan ye,
madinay ki galiyan,
ye kismet nahe to phir aur kya hai?
The human experience is defined by states. In a dogmatically secular world, the believer’s state is typically burdened by doubts and contradiction. The visitation is a balm and a healing for this state. It is a revival of the original state, the fitra, which is oppressed by our spiritual decadence. There is a corollary here. Our salutations, regardless of where we send them from, reach the Messenger in his heavenly abode. According to tradition, an angel informs him of our identify, following which He, May Allah’s peace and blessings be upon Him, returns our salam. So, the Prophet is alive. He hears and he responds. What veils our awareness of his responses is wavering hearts occupied by the dunya. But it is also true that no one visits him in his city, at his mosque, without a direct invite. That when we reach, he receives us, welcoming his rebellious lovers. Inside the haram, the fez (spiritual radiance) removes the veil which separates us from the Prophet’s responses in the course of our mundane lives. Breaking through ordinary reality, beyond the trivialities we disturb ourselves with, is the truth. The truth of the trial and the tribulation, the bereavement, the persecution, the excommunication, of every form of mental and physical anguish he withstood to deliver us from the darkness of jahiliya, from the depths of our ignorance, to preserve the message of God. The truth that in spite of our neglect of this message (a neglect he foresaw and wept for), his cry at the day of the gathering will be my ummah, my ummah. That in spite of our neglect of his sunnah, he will intercede for us in front of the Almighty. That when we will be unable to speak for ourselves, he will speak for us. And so, we are faced with this incomprehensible certainty; about him, about the revelation he received, about the heavens. As certain as we are of our own existence, or the existence of those around us. The time in the haram is overwhelmed by this certainty, which many of us face for the first time here. The heart enters a state of constriction, of being squeezed with a melancholic joy, with ecstatic remorse. As the heart constricts, the spirt soars, and then one wanders, around and around, from the baab as salam, back to the dome, then back again. Where did I leave my shoes? What time is it? How long have I been doing this? The clock, finally, its dictatorship overthrown. It doesn’t stop (although I am convinced it slows down as time has more barkat). It just stops to matter. Because what else is there to do, where else is there to be?
The Mohammedan has no promised land. He visits the holy cities and disperses back into the world, all of which was made a mosuqe for him. Yet the higher maqaam is for him to be laid to rest in Al Baqi, alongside thousands of companions (r). But to die in Medina, one must live it in. The Madni austerity is therefore part of divine examination. The true seeker must make a choice to leave behind the modern facade. In my short stay, I encountered many of these believers. These men who had no great learning and even less means filled me with contempt for myself; for they were storming the gates of heaven, whilst I grovelled in the world of flesh and blood.
ae kash madine mai mujhe maut youn aaye
kadmoon mai tere sar ho, meri rooh chali ho
A friend once said (or I deduced from his ramblings), that he has two states. He is either in Najaf, or he is yearning for Najaf. This alienation is the long-term consequence of the haram. The other reality, the truth, does not reveal itself without irrevocably altering us. This can be likened to the addict who gets a hit and keeps going back because nothing else fulfils him anymore. Life then becomes a constant struggle to return to or preserve this state. There is also the underlying fear that however much we yearn for it, outside the haram, the state will be elude us. That in the world of muamalat (affairs), vice will again overwhelm virtue. That the rot which was cleansed will reaccumulate.
khauf mai liptay huway
shak mai nahlaye huway
dua mangtay rahay
kai jaan nikal to jaye
ye sama badal na jaye