People keep telling me to find work in a “better” school. A school where students care. Where learning is valued, desired, realised. Where there is parental and administrative support. Where there isn’t a huge budget shortfall. Where resources are available and people are willing. It almost sounds heavenly...But where is the challenge. Where is the assistance to my own community that is so lost despite its rich heritage, that it can only be likened to a clumsy child groping in the dark for its mother after waking to realise her absence? Could I stand in front of such a class and feel that I am doing my part for my sisters in Islam who appear doomed to walk the well-trodden and oft-resented path of generations of women in their families before them? Sisters who are leaving themselves no buffer-zone, no protection. Relying on those who are not at all interested in them except for their own gain for a cursory time. But how can I drag myself to a place of no respect, of soul-destroying revelation, of pain on a daily basis? To face the anguish that invariably accompanies my witnessing of the state of our community at close quarters, having one’s heart ripped apart by it and then being denied a voice in an attempt at its correction?
***
As I walk to tajweed I come to the top of a large hill. All the way up it I am surrounded by construction, old and new. Towering apartment blocks that mirror one another in their hideousness. But at the top the heart lifts. A wide expanse which flows all the way to the northern horizon and onto another country. The rugged, barren landscape of a once fertile country, dotted with the odd small home and a plethora of minerets peeking from the white dust everywhere one looks. But amazingly, a small residence – for it cannot be called a house – sits just metres from me on the undeveloped side of the hill. It is made from odd cement blocks piled upon one another to act as walls. Off-cut timber straddles them, covered with branches (some still with green leaves) as well as tattered rugs and carpet as a roof. Within metres a donkey grazes quietly, and from a corner of the residence there is movement. Three laughing, smiling children – playing what looks like tip and falling over one another with the giggles. It is amazing the nature of the human character. It seems happiest with nothing.
And so I am wondering if that is my problem. There are too many choices. Too many things. Always perceiving there to be something better out there – always searching for it... Contentment. I wonder if it will be possible to find it in the classroom, in my old life, within the ancient and rundown university halls I love so much and long to return to. I find contentment in learning and sharing that knowledge and yet I cannot bring myself to return to the classroom. Yet I know somehow that I will, and that scares me.
***
Someone once told me that you don’t choose to teach it chooses you. And once it has you it won’t release you – not in tact anyway. Part of me remains with my students, some of which began sitting their final school exams today, and I worry about them. From thousands of miles away I wish I could hear their take on the papers, their preparation, last minute questions and cramming. Most of all I wish I could protect my little sisters from the big bad world they are running towards faster than they know.
***
Ya Allah, grant all students of knowledge in every corner of the world tawfiq in their studies. Guide them to a way that is best for them and make it easy upon them. Ya Allah guide my family and loved ones and grant them hidayah, and Ya Allah protect me from myself. Set my heart at rest and guide me to what is best for me in this life, in this din and in the akhirah. Only you Ya Allah are the Possessor of All Knowledge, the Bestower of all Bounties and the Merciful, Forgiver.
