The Crying Imam.

I will cry to Thee, and cry to Thee, and cry to Thee, until the milk of Thy kindness boils up.

                                                                                                         ~Rumi~

Terawikh tonight took longer than previous nights. There's a new imam today. Not a Malay man, somebody foreign. Somebody who's native tongue is the Arabic language. All this is nothing remarkable but something happened tonight. Instead of reciting the dua Terawikh after we were done, the imam decided to recite the dua after rukuk of the third rakaat of salah Witir.

Maybe it's becauce he understood every word of the dua, or perhaps there was something else altogether but the imam cried his heart out. His poem, song-like recital of the dua faltered a little when he started choking up. Then he started sobbing and there was a strain of silence punctuated by sobs from the men's side of the jamaah. It wasn't long before some of the women started crying too.

I don't know what it was but I thought that there's a kind of beauty in the Imam's fervent tears. He had a personal apocalypse in front of the whole jamaah. I don't think he was ashamed, just filled with an overwhelming longing.

I thought, 'Am I in the face of beauty?' Forgive my sappiness.

Because I was suddenly reminded of something I've read in a book on Sufism. I'm a little frustrated that I can't remember whrere I read it. It might've been from this yellowed, crumbling, moth-eaten book titled 'Some Aspects of Sufism as understood and practiced among the Malays' by Syed Naquib al-Attas. Translated by Shirle Gordon. I share the book with my friend Adila so it's not with me right now but I'm quite sure I read about it from this book.

Something about the state in which a man suffers from a heartache for which there is no cure. A longing for God. I found this excerpt of an interview that describes this state:

The great Sufi poet Rumi said, "I will cry to Thee, and cry to Thee, and cry to Thee, until the milk of Thy kindness boils up." He is expressing what is most precious for the Sufi: the longing for God. The Sufi knows that it is this longing that offers the most direct route to the Beloved, to God.

Deep within the heart there is the primal pain of longing, the cry of the soul separated from its source. This pain comes from the memory of when we were together with God, what the Sufis call "the sweetness that was before honey or bee." At special moments in our life we can be given a taste of this union, a taste of divine remembrance. It is so unbelievably sweet and intoxicating. And it awakens the knowing, latent in the soul, of being together with God. This is what ignites the longing, the fire within the heart that begins to burn as a heartache.

In any love affair, you long for the one you love. You wait for the telephone call. You wait for the letter. You wait for your lover to come home. In a love affair with God the feeling is the same, but amplified. You long and you wait. You wait for the moment when the Beloved suddenly appears in your heart, when you feel the tender touch of your Beloved.

Even though I did not cry for I felt unworthy of shedding such pure tears. I didn't understand what is said in the dua, who was I to cry as he did? All I'm sure of is that I was, in the face of beauty. Hopefully the rest of Ramadhan will be equally beautiful.