The Everlasting Tragedy of the Wicked

"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.“ - Audre Lorde

Coffee stained the air of a Bedan’s dorm as she finished Fajr. She faced her reflection wrapping her favourite yellow hijab, a symbol of her identity, around her head and walked out to start another day of routine. A sea of people and car horns filled the busy street of Mendiola with waving rainbow corals of umbrellas. She surfed along the road to San Beda University, the school she finds growth in, studying not just to be called a ‘professional’ but for the sole purpose of seeking knowledge and finding answers to questions that dominate her mind.

What is so unique about me that I can use to contribute to the Ummah? Where do I excel? What is Allah’s gift to me? True as they say: One who stops learning is dead.

History, culture, art, politics, and romance are what she lives by and everything she does, she does for Allah, for representing her religion, and in making a difference to the world.

"Someday, I shall be as great as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, a Muslim woman reaching new heights no matter the boundary. I long for the day I see your face, oh beloved Muhammad. I will do Hajj in my early 20s, publish a book by 18, and go to seek the Great Perhaps. But it’d be okay, everything will be out when the time comes, Almirah."

Growing up in a Catholic environment, she never truly fit in not only being the sole hijabi in most places, but also because passionate people such as her suffer the most in this passive society.

The hijab is more than just a piece of cloth, it represents an ethnicity, a strong hold on my beliefs despite the fact that I am a minority in a predominantly Christian society. There are many opportunities I’ve missed because I allowed society to break through me, but not anymore. I long to be more vocal with my advocacy, to stop any form of discrimination. There is courage in daring to be different in a world that is constantly telling you what you should be. More than just finding my spiritual identity, I have also found who I truly was and what I wanted to be in the eyes of people. I have learned to embrace my differentness, and that to be respected is a greater compliment than to be admired by people. Yet you cannot force people to think the same way as you do, Almirah. That’s not how the world works.

Nevertheless, she is proud to bear the blood of the Maranao and be a Muslim without labels. Plainly Muslim. She recalled the Last Prophet saying “There will come a time when holding on to your faith will be like holding hot coal.” Yet she knows she is incapable of letting go for she has concrete hands, her heart, a fire extinguisher, and her faith, Islam.

Little did she know, today's the day the coal ignites, eating her whole. As she stood by the enormous facade of neo-gothic twin towers named the Abbey of Our Lady of Montserrat, the College Chapel of San Beda, the edifice she begets respect and wonder for, she witnessed a strange sight as the choirs of the on going mass continued to sing the Great Amen. A man walked eerily towards the entrance as if in a state of paranoia looking left and right, wearing a puffy jacket that's too big for his size and too hot for this weather. She chuckled at the thought that he may have been responsible for smuggling kittens in the chapel that's responsible for all the wandering cats in school. 

But all of a sudden, he sprinted towards the Abbey. Her smile disappeared.

A deafening thunder-like sound erupted from the man. And the next thing Almirah knows, she's lying on the ground among all the others. 

Though her hijab was intact, her ears felt as if it were stabbed by knives, her body, crushed by a bulldozer, her bones turning to metal, her head throbbed with a headache from inhaling the smoke coming out of what was then the house of the Christian god, now a haven of motionless bodies. The wails of pain and grief and the sound of police sirens was already surrounding the area along with fully equipped men scrutinizing the field. Despite the immense pain, she managed to stand up to answer the cries of a kid squished by concrete nearby. Slowly, she walked up in pain to the boy but instead, was greeted by a bullet to her chest and laid down again to the ground… for good. From a distance, she heard the police officer shouting:

“I-I got the bomber!”

In her final moments, Almirah only ever thought of the everlasting tragedy of the wicked...

When you have a rusted heart, you choose to ignore the beautiful things in someone even when they’re apparent. You choose to dwell on things that would corrupt the image of such person in your mind because your heart cannot take the fact that they’re not what you want them to be. And the world hates to see a Muslim win.

This isn’t the Great Perhaps I sought for.

Mashallah.

The hijab that gave her passion, an identity, meaning, and life only led to her own demise.